42 
NATURE NOTES. 
If in any county no steps have been taken under the Acts, 
the authorities should at once be stirred up to a sense of their 
duty. 
The first efforts of legislature — in recent years, at least — was 
the prescribing of a close time by the Act of 1880, of which the 
effect, as everybody ought to know, is to make it penal, under a 
small penalty, to kill or take any wdld bird between March i and 
August I, and, under a greater penalty, to kill or take any of the 
86 kinds of birds mentioned in the schedule to the Act. That 
schedule is curiously composed, and must have needed amend- 
ment almost from the very first. The following abstract w’ill 
show the ways in which it can now be improved upon, and in 
which further protection can be given to birds and their eggs : — 
(1) Under section 8 of the Act of 1880, the Secretary of State 
may extend or vary the close time. 
(2) Under section 3 of the Act of 1894, he may order that the 
protection afforded by the Act of 1880 shall be conferred on any 
birds which he thinks fit to include in his Order, just as if they 
had been originally scheduled to that Act. 
(3) Under section 2 of the Act of 1894, he may prohibit by 
Order the taking or destroying of tlie eggs of any specified kind 
of wild bird within a whole county, or any part or parts thereof ; 
and 
(4) He may set apart definite areas within a county in whicli 
it shall be unlawful to take or destroy any wild birds’ eggs for a 
specified number of years. 
It will be seen that there is considerable scope for activity in 
the direction of protecting wild birds, and, though the state of 
the law may not yet be perfect, it would seem that one or more 
of the possible methods must surely be found available and 
calculated to do good in every county. As to the relative 
efficiency of the various methods, there may be difference of 
opinion. Our own view is that Nos. 2 and 4 are likely to give 
the best results if judiciously worked, though No. 3 is un- 
doubtedly the most showy. The reason for this belief is that it 
is much easier to detect a man or boy going to or coming from 
the slaying or capture of a bird than it is to spot an illegal theft 
of eggs. You can see a person go out with a gun, or you may 
be able to espy the victim of his prowess on his person, but it is 
very hard to bring to the proof a marauder of eggs, even though 
his mouth may be full of them at the time. Moreover, there are 
many eggs of totally distinct birds so extremely alike that the 
best experts would hesitate to swear that they were the eggs of 
a protected bird. So much for the superiority of method No. 2, 
as compared with No. 3. As to No. 4, the creation of well- 
selected asylums for birds is a most hopeful undertaking. Not 
only will birds which already nest and breed in such places con- 
tinue to do so with greater freedom and success, but, in the 
freemasonry of nature, the news of a safe home is likely to get 
abroad among other birds also, and thus they will be induced to 
