CURIOSITIES OF BIRD LEGISLATION.

AN Act has been lately passed called an Act for the Protection of Certain Wild Birds during the Breeding Season (35 and 36 Vict. ch. 78), which, with the gun license, is a move in the right direction, but which is so incomplete, that it cannot be accepted except as an instalment towards more generous and comprehensive legislation upon such a praiseworthy subject.

The schedule of wild birds to be protected between the 15th of March and the 1st of August comprises only seventy-nine kinds, out of some three hundred and forty-nine that are usually admitted as being British birds. The difficulty is to discover upon what principles these seventy-nine have been selected, and why other birds quite as deserving of protection have been left in the cold shade. It is impossible but that the framers of the Act must have had some principles to guide them in their selection, yet most assuredly these are not patent upon the surface.

The list of the happy seventy-nine, which is arranged alphabetically, begins with the avocet or avoset, a bird common enough in the winter about the sea-shore, lakes, mouths of rivers and marshes, and which assembles in large flocks on the fens in the breeding season, but has no culinary or known merits to distinguish it from the oyster-catcher, or water-ouzel, or other allied birds, which are omitted from the list, which ends with the wryneck, a beautiful bird, yet the least distinguished among its tribe, if classed, as Bewick assumes, among the thrushes, although perhaps more closely allied to the woodpeckers. Its sole merit appears to be that its food consists of ants as well as other insects.

The eagle and falcon tribe are left without protection, probably because they can to a certain extent protect themselves, not because they are birds of prey, for the owls are protected. We are, however, left in doubt whether the term owl is used generically or otherwise. It is to be hoped it is so, for we have nine species of owls in Britain. The shrike, of which we have four species, is not protected, and perhaps justly so, for they will chase all small birds on the wing. Crows, rooks, and their congeners are also unprotected. Yet do we agree with Bewick, that "the advantages derived from the destruction which they make among grubs, larvæ, worms, and noxious insects, greatly overpay the injury done to the future harvest by the small quantity of corn they may destroy in searching after their favourite food. Rooks are to a certain extent protected by rookeries, but we have often lamented that the mag

pie is not permitted to enliven our fields as it does on the Continent. In this country it is simply made to decorate a barn-door. The raven has almost disappeared. Ravensworth and Ravenscourt know it no longer. Only the autumn past we sought in vain for a chough in its last fastnesses of Cornwall. The jay is not protected, and indeed both it and the nutcracker are destructive of young birds, as well as of fruit; but the beautiful and harmless chatterer, which feeds upon berries and insects, the golden oriole, the splendid roller, might have received the same protection as is granted to the cuckoo and the wryneck.

But above all the thrushes-the missel-bird, the throstle, and the blackbird-who charm us not only with the sweetness but the variety of their song, why have they been left unprotected? The fieldfare and the redwing do not breed in this country, and the cuckoo is an impostor, although he does herald the merry month of May, and is said to devour the well-known beetle, whose larva, sometimes called the rockworm, is the greatest of garden pests, and the wryneck is credited with a predilection for ants; but why the two latter should thus have met with legislative protection, whilst the whole tribe of thrushes, as also the starlings and ouzels, are left without, baffle all powers of conjecture.

Whilst our spring songsters, the favourites of all, are thus left open to destruction, except where protected in a private grove or garden, woodpeckers and the little nuthatch have found favour in the eyes of parliamentary bird-fanciers. So also the creeper-an amusing and social little bird-whence Linnæus called it Certhia familiaris, which it would be a pity to destroy.

Of the Passerine order, the grosbeak and the crossbill, the latter only to be met with in remote pine-forests, are protected, whilst the bullfinch, which is now so rare as to be imported from Germany, is unprotected. The whole tribe of buntings, so partial to man that they will flit before him on the way-a snow-bunting once accompanied the writer for miles across a moorland—are also left without protection.

Among the finches, the goldfinch, in which charming little bird, according to Buffon, "beauty of plumage, melody of song, sagacity and docility of disposition seem all united; the siskin or aberdevine, mild and gentle as the canary, with which it pairs, and the redpoles (or redpolls, as they are called in the Act) amidst "the blossomed furze unprofitably gay," are happily protected, whilst the linnet, with its lively and sweetly varied song, its gentle manners and docile disposition, is with the gay chaffinch and the pert sparrow left unprotected. The chaffinch is certainly a great devourer of garden seeds, and the character of the sparrow is questionable, besides that its unlimited propagation is scarcely

warranted, but so also it ought not to be persecuted to death. Bewick is right when he says sparrows do as much good as they do harm, and they are essentially house birds, living only in the company of human beings, and how niggardly it is to grudge a little creature, whom nature has taught to place its trust in us, its small pittance; still more unjust is it to destroy harmless living things which our exiled compatriots, dwellers in Australia and elsewhere, have been glad to send for to remind them of home.

Flycatchers are protected by, it is to be supposed, their utter insignificance. The spotted flycatcher is, however, an amusing bird, although Bewick says of it, of all our summer birds it is the most mute; and of the lark tribe, the sea-lark, by which it is to be supposed the rock, meadow, or field-lark is meant, the woodlark, and the pipit are protected, whilst the skylark-the lark preeminently is left without protection:

Up springs the lark,

Shrill-voiced and loud, the messenger of morn:
Ere yet the shadows fly, he, mounted, sings
Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunts
Calls up the tuneful nations,

writes the great poet of nature, who claims to it the rank of leader of the general chorus, and as the most conspicuous among the various kinds of singing-birds with which this country abounds. Yet is the skylark, with its nest on the open ground, exposed to the depredations of the smaller kinds of voracious animals, such as the weasel and the stoat, and is destroyed almost wholesale by man. Poor lark! he may be prolific, and he may eat a few grains of wheat, and be subjected to excise in Germany, but we still much. wish he had been protected, at all events during the breeding season in this country, where town is everywhere encroaching upon every bird and twig that remains.

Whilst the glorious songster of the heavens is thus left to be plundered of its eggs, to be netted, trapped, shot, or destroyed by privilege, the amusing wagtails, with their small insignificant notes, are sheltered by a saving notice.

Of the numerous family of warblers, the Dartford, the reed, the sedge, the chiffchaff, and the hedge-sparrow are protected, as also the nightingale, the robin redbreast, the redstart, the blackcap, the wren, the wheatear, the whinchat, and the stonechat, but the garden warbler, or fauvette, and the whitethroat are for some mysterious reasons passed over. The garden warbler has never failed to come with the spring, and build in our small suburban retreat, favouring us with its sweet song in return for the protection afforded to it.

So also the long-tailed titmouse and the bearded titmouse are for some inscrutable reasons deemed worthy of protection, whilst

the oxeye, the crested titmouse, the blue tomtit, the coal and marsh titmice are left open to extermination.

Swallows are protected, possibly from some ancient superstitions, as recorded by Pliny, and handed down from all times, as well as by the force of opinion; so also is the nightjar, a great enemy to the cockchafer, only unfortunately the bird itself is rarely to be met with (the last we saw was amid Burnham Beeches), whilst the destructive insect itself is everywhere.

Perhaps the most extraordinary omission of all-not even excepting the lark and the linnet-is the dove tribe. If the ringdove eats grain and even turnips, so likewise is it very fond of the roots of pernicious grasses-especially of the couch-grass. The wild pigeon is the parent of our stock-dove, and ought to have been protected. He would be a bold man who, in face of the ignorance which still prevails as to the uses of particular birdseven birds of prey-in the grand economy of nature, would deprive a bird of protection upon often calumnious prejudices.

No birds are more persecuted than doves, yet in the beautiful language of the poet:

The jay, the rook, the daw,

And each harsh pipe (discordant heard alone)
Aid the full concert, while the stock-dove breathes
A melancholy murmur through the whole.

Not less singularly tender and plaintive is the note of the turtledove, cooing as it does in the most gentle and soothing accentsthe emblem of connubial attachment and constancy-but it has been considered unworthy of protection, possibly out of some latent regard among legislators for a court given to nothing but pronouncing separations and divorces.

Game birds come under special laws enacted in their favour, and it is sincerely to be hoped that, whatever passion there may be for rescinding old and devising new and experimental laws, not only game birds, but game of every description, including even rabbits in certain places, constituting as they do an important article of food, will never be left without such an amount of protection as may prevent their utter extermination.

It is so far pleasant to find that bitterns, coots, moorhens, landrail, sanderlings and sandpipers, plovers, quails, sandgrouse, snipe, curlews, woodcock, wild duck and widgeon, and some other birds, neglected by the Game Laws, will now at least meet with protection during the breeding season. It is owing to protection that the quail abounds on the Continent, whilst it is rare in this country.

Plovers, valuable in themselves, especially in the stone and

golden kinds, as well as for their eggs, are indeed happily protected, as are also dotterel, very fat in May and June, and much esteemed for the table. Sanderlings and sandpipers are in the same category, and enlivening the shores as these graceful little birds do, they deserve, apart from their being in favour with some as articles of food, to be preserved from wholesale destruction.

Herons are still protected in some parks, but the tribe, including cranes, storks, (protected in most countries), and egrets, all except bitterns, have found no favour in the eyesight of our modern legislators. The spoonbill is protected, and so is the curlew. Of the snipe tribe, the woodcock, the common snipe, and the summer snipe another name for the sandpiper-are mentioned. Godwits, as much esteemed by some epicures as a delicacy as the snipe, are also protected. It is to be hoped that the word godwit, as also sandpiper, and indeed in all cases where the word is used generically, the whole of the species comprised under that name are meant, for there are, for example, eight kinds of godwit and twenty-two_of sandpipers.

Yet the introduction of specific names, as the dunlin, the ruff, and reeve, among sandpipers, the dunbird among widgeons, the pewit and the lapwig among plovers, the martin and swift among swallows, of the greenshank and redshank among godwits, of the shoveller among ducks, and of the stone curlew, whimbrell, and thicknee among curlews, would seem to imply the contrary, and that the terms sandpiper, godwit, plover, swallow, duck, and curlew are not used generically, or where would be the use of distinguishing one species from another? There appears also to be a useless repetition in some cases. Stint, oxbird, and purre are for example, according to Montagu's "Ornithological Dictionary," synonymous for dunlin. Out of the seventy-nine names, we have here four which apply to the same bird. Again, we have mallard and wild duck, pewit and lapwing, dunbird and pochard, sandpiper and summer snipe, whaup and curlew, thicknee and stone curlew, all generally received as synonymous, although we are ready to admit that there may be provincial and local confusion in the application of the same names.

The avocet, avoset or scooper-the singular form of whose bill led Buffon to suppose it to be " one of those errors or essays of nature which, if carried a little further, would destroy itself” (certain modern doctrines of types and natural selection being the legitimate descendants of such nonsense)—and the brilliant kingfisher, are to be allowed to breed undisturbed; but while the landrail, in reality a game bird, is protected, the water-rail, esteemed by many as rich and delicious eating as its land congener, has not been deemed worthy of notice. The gallinules, all game birds,