44 
FALCONIDiE. 
RAF TO RES, 
FALCONl DTE. 
MARSH HARRIER, or MOOR BUZZARD. 
Circus rufus. 
PLATE XVI. FIG. I. 
The naturalist may raise his protest against the wanton 
destruction of the objects of his admiration, as Mr. Wil- 
mot has done in the pages of the “ Zoologist,” and de¬ 
serve the thanks of his fellow men. But when a whole 
race of beautiful beings are becoming exterminated for 
the general good, when the dreary waste is becoming 
a fruitful field, and the bulrush is about to give place 
to the blade of wheat, he must grieve in silence. 
From the fens of Cambridge and the adjoining counties, 
a few years ago frequented by numbers of the three 
species of Harrier, they are now driven by the plough— 
and will probably, ere long, like one of our most beau¬ 
tiful British butterflies, once an inhabitant of the same 
district, become extinct in this country. Mr. Alfred 
Newton, of Elveden, tells me that a great many of the 
three Harriers used to breed in some of the fens of 
Norfolk, but that they have been driven away by the 
superior system of drainage—that “ the Moor Buzzard 
was the first to cease from breeding there, then the Hen 
Harrier, and, lastly, the ash-coloured species.” 
Montagu, in describing the eggs of the Marsh Harrier, 
says, that they are “ perfectly white, without spot;” La¬ 
tham, on the contrary, in his description of the eggs of 
the same species, that they are “ spotted with brown.” 
