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If however such is the case, it is strange that the habit should have been overlooked by those who have paid close attention to this curious and interesting group. Bird-catchers, at any rate, without troubling to inquire into the reason, turn the instinct to profitable account, and in some parts of the country a stuffed owl is an important item of their stock-in-trade.
In Guernsey I was told a few years ago that it had been much more numerous than it then was, the bird-catchers having had a good deal to answer for in having shortened its numbers. It is now, however, again increasing its numbers, as I saw many more this year than I had seen before at any time of year.
The jealousy excited by the act of singing is constantly taken advantage of by bird-catchers; a male, in good song, is hidden and protected, whilst a stuffed bird, surrounded by limed twigs, is exposed to view. In this manner, as Mr. Weir informs me, a man has in the course of a single day caught fifty, and in one instance, seventy, male chaffinches.
Yes, the reapers, famed in poems and lithographs, are desperate bird-catchers. At the season of migration they capture thousands of these weary travellers with snares or limed twigs; on Maggiore alone sixty thousand meet their end. We have but those they choose to leave us to charm our summer nights. Perhaps they will kill my nightingale in the Carmelite garden. The idea fills me with indignation.
When some civilized English-speaking bird-catchers get a bird they do not want, they will deliberately wrench its bill apart, so that it must die of lingering starvation. Sometimes the cruelty is done to man himself.
With English bird-catchers this contrivance is in common use, but so far as we know it has not been utilized to any great extent in this country. It is chiefly used at night by the aid of a lantern, and large numbers of sparrows and other birds are often secured.
Yes, the reapers, famed in poems and lithographs, are desperate bird-catchers. At the season of migration they capture thousands of these weary travellers with snares or limed twigs; on Maggiore alone sixty thousand meet their end. We have but those they choose to leave us to charm our summer nights. Perhaps they will kill my nightingale in the Carmelite garden. The idea fills me with indignation.
For, after all, if laws do not express or square with public will or opinion, they have little force; and if, in any locality, the people thought proper to do so if they were not restrained by that dull, tame spirit I have spoken of they would, lawfully or unlawfully, protect their sea-fowl from the cockney sportsmen, and sweep the bird-catchers out of their lanes and waste lands.
In effect, to translate man back again into nature; to master the many vain and visionary interpretations and subordinate meanings which have hitherto been scratched and daubed over the eternal original text, HOMO NATURA; to bring it about that man shall henceforth stand before man as he now, hardened by the discipline of science, stands before the OTHER forms of nature, with fearless Oedipus-eyes, and stopped Ulysses-ears, deaf to the enticements of old metaphysical bird-catchers, who have piped to him far too long: "Thou art more! thou art higher! thou hast a different origin!" this may be a strange and foolish task, but that it is a TASK, who can deny!
I remember how we took England at one blow on Senlac field; but see you here, Sir King. "And what if I cannot stop the bird-catchers? Do they expect to lime Frenchmen as easily as sparrows?" "Sparrows! It is not sparrows that I have been fattening on this last month. I tell you, Sire, I have seen wild-fowl alone in that island enough to feed them all the year round.
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