The Balance of Nature. 
159 
1877J 
neither scent produced nor track made in the immediate 
neighbourhood, by which an enemy might have a clue to 
find it out and rob it of its treasure.” 
“ Keepers may boast of their prowess in setting traps 
(and in testimony of their success they may nail up the 
dead bodies of carrion crows against the kennel wall) ; but 
I am of opinion that if the Squire could ever get to know 
the real number of pheasants and hares which have been 
killed or mutilated in those traps, he would soon perceive 
that he had been duped by the gamekeeper. The frequent 
discharge, too, of the keeper’s gun, though it may now and 
then kill or wound a carrion crow, still will infallibly drive 
away the game in the end, and oblige it to seek some more 
favoured and sequestered spot.” This is cogent reasoning, 
and we do not see that it is anywhere fully met by Mr. 
Morant. The disturbing effeCt of the discharge of guns he 
himself admits. He tells us that in very remote parts of 
Scotland he found the grouse “ as tame as the boobies which 
the sailors knock on the head in the South Sea Islands.” 
They actually declined to fiy up and be shot in the only 
orthodox manner, and required to be gradually educated 
into shyness. 
Secondly, as a cause of the increasing scarcity of many 
interesting birds, we accuse not the sportsman,* in the or- 
dinary English sense of the word, but the troops of roughs 
who on public holidays sally forth from our towns into the 
surrounding country and fire promiscuously at everything 
having wings and feathers, no matter on whose property. 
If we really wish to protect birds we must put severe 
restrictions upon this class ; they are worse than either 
gamekeepers or poachers. 
Thirdly, we must blame the bird-catchers. Scarcely a 
native bird having any beauty in its plumage or any sweet- 
ness in its song can escape the attentions of these 
marauders ; it is trapped, carried away a prisoner, and gene- 
rally dies at no very distant date, from want of care and 
from improper food. The wild birds are indeed in the en- 
joyment of a nominal “close time.” Bird-catchers are 
prohibited from plying their vocation during the breeding 
season, and nest-robbing is of course made altogether illegal. 
But the protection is merely nominal ; it is not the duty of 
any person to see that the ACt is duly enforced. The 
* We should have nothing against the sportsman if he would only do two 
things: — first, eschew anti-vivisedtionism ; and, secondly, make better use of 
his splendid opportunities for the study of animated nature. Too often, how? 
ever, he, regards birds as mere moving targets. 
