. Mutton birds and other birds . ything is true it is that man doesnot live by bread alone. We do not most highlyprize the necessaries of life, but rather thedelicacies of taste and sight and hearing,-—the pleasures of our leisure hours. This modest claim, I think, may be fairly urgedin regard to birds, that by the extirpation ofspecies, a potential source of happiness is deniedto the coming generations, and furthermore,that without the possibility of full investigationstructures may be forevei lost that bind the])resent to the past. I believe myself there is nomore cruelty in the killing of H
. Mutton birds and other birds . ything is true it is that man doesnot live by bread alone. We do not most highlyprize the necessaries of life, but rather thedelicacies of taste and sight and hearing,-—the pleasures of our leisure hours. This modest claim, I think, may be fairly urgedin regard to birds, that by the extirpation ofspecies, a potential source of happiness is deniedto the coming generations, and furthermore,that without the possibility of full investigationstructures may be forevei lost that bind the])resent to the past. I believe myself there is nomore cruelty in the killing of Humming-Birdsthan in the slaughter of Turkeys. The awfuldifference lies in this,—that in the one casethere is the possibility of the annihilation of aspecies and in the other no likelihood of such anevent. The subject should be one of the livinginterests of our world, approachable withoutcrocodile tears, and to be dealt with as men of theworld deal with affairs of the world. Perhapsbird-nesting is to be condemned, but often I. ca AND OTHER BIRDS 3 tliiiik it is, like the fear of the Lord, the begiuningof wisdom. Perhaps shooting is to be condemned,])ut it is certain that species to which an intel-ligent commercial interest has become attachedare most sure of suivival. Perhaps the takingof life in any way is to be condenmed, but ifHumming Birds and Birds of Paradise werebred for the market, as capons and beeves arebred, the most lovely sj)ecies of birds wouldbe as safe to the race as barndoor fowls. Indeed, I often think that birds have been butill served by their friends and are unfor-tunate in their literature, ^tuch of it is childish,much of it is maudlin. There are the writerswhose science is, I sometimes suspect, only aknowledge of Latin names, and who chill theirtheme with a foreign nomenclature. Thereare folk like nwself, who can see perhaps,but whose observation is little better, alas,than the observation of the keen-eyed savage, andwho lack the special training and w
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