22 
Lost British Birds. 
body to practise liis beautiful art on, is chronicled in the 
newspapers. There the interest ends; since the dead 
bittern, having lost its “ sublimity ” with its life, is no 
longer an object that any rational being can take pleasure 
n contemplating. It is merely u something pretty in a glass 
case.” 
“ Can nothing be done to stop the annual slaughter of 
such visitants as these ? of which some few, I feel confident, 
under a protective system, would still pretty regularly 
remain to breed with us.” 
Thus wrote Henry Stevenson, author of the Birds of 
Norfolk, when near the end of his life. In the favoured 
county where he had always lived, he had witnessed the 
extermination of some beautiful and interesting species, and 
had observed that others were annually becoming scarcer; 
and his soul at length revolted against the senseless and 
hateful passion for killing every creature distinguished by its 
beauty, strangeness, or rarity. But he could do no more 
than ask, as so many others have asked during the last 
half century, “ Can nothing be done?” 
XI. Marsh Harrier —Circus eeruginosus. Once a 
regular breeder, abundant in the fen district, and not 
uncommon in suitable localities throughout the country ; now 
regarded as extinct by most authorities. Hancock, in Birds 
of Northumberland and Durham (1873) writes: “A few 
years ago common on swampy moorlands, where it bred, 
it has now almost disappeared under the policy of the game- 
preserver, and is fallen, or is fast falling, from the rank of 
a resident to that of a mere casual visitant. In 1823 I 
took a nest of it, with four eggs, on the moors at Wemmer- 
gill, near Middleton-on-Tees, the shooting-box of the late 
Lord Strathmore. Both parent birds had been trapped or 
shot by the gamekeeper, and formed part of his museum, 
nailed against the stable-walls. This collection was made 
up of Hawks, Owls, Daws, Buzzards, and such like c vermin,’ 
both biped and quadruped, being altogether one of the 
