is an infliction that exists for the most part in imagination only. To 
the poetical temperament, moreover, the fact that sundry birds mark the 
coming and going of the two most important seasons of the year counts 
for not a little. Who can hear without some degree of emotion the well- 
known call of the cuckoo for the first time in spring? Who can be 
indifferent to the spectacle of April’s first swallow? Who fails to listen 
to the harsh note of the corncrake, falling on the ear for the first time, 
without realising that the glad season is in very truth at hand? Then, 
again, the familiar chuckle of the fieldfare, to be heard generally about 
mid-October, proclaims all too eloquently that summer-like days, with 
the pastimes and pleasures attaching thereto, are essentially a thing of 
a bygone period. There is, in short, every reason why birds, speaking in a , 
general sense, should have the canopy of protection thrown about them. 
All are attractive in some form or another, and there are but few, very 
few, which can be regarded as so offensive in their habits as to be 
without any redeeming qualities, and therefore beyond the pale of 
beneficent legislation on the part' of those who are not insensible to 
the great and varied charms imparted by birds to country life in the 
British Islands, 
The provisions of the existing enactments with regard to the pro¬ 
tection of wild buds are, in certain connexions to be referred to here¬ 
after, far from satisfactory to practical—or, what I prefer rather to term, 
field-ornithologists. Now, to my thinking, sundry of those who have 
had a finger in the framing of the laws and regulations in question have 
plainly demonstrated by their handiwork how lacking in competence they 
were for the task. Moreover, not a few whose duty it should have been 
to see to the enforcement of some egregious efforts at avian legislation 
have been apparently content to sit still and do nothing. Certain it is 
that for years past “ protected ” birds have been killed with impunity 
all over the country, despite the legislative enactments of the various 
County Councils ! Not only this, but repeatedly have announcements 
of such flagrant violations of the law been made in iournals and periodi¬ 
cals devoted to natural history ! Notwithstanding, prosecutions have 
proved as rare as some of the unfortunate birds foully done to death. 
Howevermuch men of repute in the ornithological world may deplore 
the shortcomings of much of the legislation passed by County Councils, 
they at all events recognise the good intentions therein set forth. But, 
I would ask, of what avail are good intentions whici are conspicuously 
