CLOSE-TIME FOR SEA BIRDS. 89 
in Nature Notes might induce its readers to set off at once for the purpose 
of exterminating them : — 
“ In the first place it is not botanists but dealers that are to be dreaded as 
exterminators ; secondly, I am prepared to turn any of my readers loose in any 
of my described localities, and shall be surprised if without further guidance they 
come upon my plants ; thirdly, I should be sorry that we should run into the 
opposite and equally odious extreme of jealous botanical selfishness. The 
botanists of older days did not treat us thus.” 
We cannot too highly commend Mr. Bennett’s practice, as stated by him in 
another part of the present number (p. 96) of “ distributing garden-grown speci- 
mens of our rare native plants, in order to partially satisfy the craving to fill up 
gaps in herbaria.” Some may consider this a pandering to the depraved tastes of 
“ the mere collector,” but it has many good results, and we hope before long to 
advocate the extension of the practice and to give hints by which many of our 
readers may participate in the good work. While on this subject we may mention 
a letter received from Mr. J. Jenner Weir, in which, in courteously replying to our 
query (Nature Notes, p. 58) as to the authenticity of the alleged discovery of 
Menziesia ( Dabeocia ) polifolia at Bournemouth, he says that the original dis- 
coverer kept the exact locality a secret for fear of extermination. While sympa- 
thising with such Selbornian repulsion to the idea of our rarest plants falling into 
the clutches of some greedy collector, we cannot help thinking that it would be 
far better for any discoverer of a plant whose existence is liable to doubt, to send 
duly accredited specimens to trustworthy authorities, such as the officials at Kew 
or at the Botanical Department of the British Museum, so that the matter might 
be placed beyond dispute. — E d., N. N.] 
THE CLOSE-TIME FOR SEA BIRDS. 
FTER several years’ endeavour at our East Riding 
Quarter Sessions at Beverley to have the close-time 
for our sea birds enlarged from the 1st of August to 
the 1 st of September, I at last succeeded, June 26th, 
1881, so far as to have it enlarged to the 12th of August.* 
This was good in itself, and also as a stepping-stone to the 
further end 1 had aimed at all along. But when the Wild 
Birds Protection Act was passed, excellent as the measure was, 
and is, in itself, it unfortunately had the effect of doing away 
with the boon obtained by this, and some other counties, of an 
extended date, all being thenceforward put again on one dead 
level, as the Act of Parliament overrode and overruled what 
they had done and the sanction given by the Home Secretary 
to the recommendations to him from their several Courts of 
Quarter Sessions. 
Happily, however, as I hope it will prove to have been, I 
met at the house of a neighbouring M.P., Mr. Alfred E. Pease, 
one of the members for York, and got him to take the matter 
up ; and now I want, through your many influential supporters 
(for such 1 am sure they are), to bring all the pressure they can 
* This was not what I had given notice for, but to the formerdate, but finding 
that I should endanger the whole if I did not accept the latter, I acted on the 
advice and took it as rov Seurepor ttKovv. 
