THE BRITISH AVIFAUNA. 
123 
agency. Undoubtedly, it wants careful watching and protec- 
tion, especially from “whole clutch” egg collectors. The 
dotterel, save as a bird of passage (in which character its 
numbers seem to have revived again a little in the last few 
years), was always anything but a numerous species in the 
breeding season, and confined to the misty mountain heights, 
where it still rears its young."' Some Scotch landowners can 
still be proud of their eagles. These are all the instances given, 
but I reply to the author’s question that the lives of these 
species, as British breeding birds, are in all probability worth a 
good many years’ purchase, and I cannot allow that “it would 
be idle to retain them in a work on British birds, which is not 
intended to be out of date one or two decades hence.” 
We are now reduced to 200 species, but even these we are not 
left to enjoy in peace, because “ a large proportion are never 
seen by those whose life is confined to land ; they are pelagic, 
and only to be met with out at sea, or in the neighbourhood of 
those naked melancholy isles ” It is quite true that 
to see some species which have a northern range one must go to 
Scotland, though there is always a chance of meeting with an 
example in the south ; and to observe sea-birds in the breeding 
season, we must go to the coast, or the marshes and moors. 
Nor can one reasonably expect to have shy waders breeding in 
suburban districts in the home counties. But “pelagic” means 
“ pertaining to the deep sea,” and, surel}q only a very few, and 
not “ a large proportion,” of the 200 species allotted to us are 
pelagic. With the exception of petrels and auks (which may be 
seen by visiting their breeding stations), all the other water birds 
on our list may be seen (in localities which they frequent) from 
the land, during the periods they spend on British shores or in 
British waters. 
Our author deprecates the idea that he has strained a point 
in order to make things look a little worse than they are, and 
adds that they are worse than he has made them appear. The 
present writer is thankful that he cannot fully agree with him. 
Everyone must deplore the (in some degree inevitable) change 
which has come over our avifauna, but no good will be done by 
painting the picture in more gloomy colours than is necessary, 
and this, I think, Mr. Hudson, despite his protest, has really 
done. I am sure that no one would be more pleased than 
Mr. Hudson himself if this should prove to be the case. 
The fact is that, partly from the luxuriance of our hedgerows 
and our gardens, and the wooded and varied nature of much of 
our country, many of the individual species of our wonderfully 
varied and interesting little avifauna require careful looking for. 
* The Rev. II. A. Macpherson writes : “ It would be a mistake to suppose 
that the dotterel has at any time bred at all numerously even in the wildest 
regions,” the gre.ater number visiting the Lake district on the spring passages 
moving on. 'Three pairs nested in 1891. (,Fauna of Lakeland.) 
