28 
Lost British Birds . 
nesting in a few of tlie wildest and most extensive moor¬ 
lands in England and Wales.” This was written some six 
or seven years ago ; if a few pairs of Hen Harriers have 
survived to the present time I shall be glad to know it. 
The loss of these extinct hawks, and of others that are 
threatened with extinction, is greatly to be deplored. To 
say nothing of their value to us because they are what they 
are—parts of that harmonious and infinitely complex 
system which the mind contemplates with inexhaustible 
delight—they are necessary to the health of the system. 
They are, as Canon Tristram has aptly said, the “ sanitary 
police of nature ” ; and their action in removing the weak¬ 
lings and the infected, and in keeping all creatures that are 
liable to be preyed on by them perpetually on the alert, is 
wholly beneficial, and the chief cause of that undimmed 
health, boundless vigour, and bright intelligence character¬ 
istic of wild animal life. 
These are familiar truths, hut unhappily they have been, 
and continue to be, disregarded by our landowners—the one 
class that had it in their power to preserve the bird popu¬ 
lation to the country in something like its original varied 
character. The desire for a large head of game, a big au¬ 
tumnal “ shoot ”—the ignoble ambition to transform a great 
estate into a kind of glorified poultry-farm, where you shoot 
your birds, instead of catching them in the usual way and 
wringing their necks—has overbalanced all other con¬ 
siderations. Hence the partridge and pheasant coddling 
policy, and the pitiless persecution of all birds whose 
presence is, or is ignorantly supposed to be, a check on the 
excessive multiplication of the one or two species chosen for 
preservation. 
On the other side it may be said that the careful preserva¬ 
tion of partridges, and still more of pheasants, affords 
protection to incalculable numbers of small birds ; not only 
from “ vermin,” but also from human beings who kill birds 
and pull their nests down, merely for the pleasure of so 
doing. To those, then, who are satisfied so long as we 
possess an abundance of bird life, however few the species 
