LONGSHORE " SPORTSMEN."
In watching the nurseries of the herring gulls this June— and they have a population of thousands, I should say, in Cornwall and North Devon alone—I was horrified to hear the sound of a gun at the foot of the cliffs and to know that the target was the gull at nesting time. I was told locally that very many sea birds are shot, not by the sort of gun I had heard, but by air guns in the hands of schoolboys home for the holidays. The air gun is not so bad as the .410, which is now used by a majority of the modern poachers as well as by boys ; but it should not be put into the hands of anyone who will shoot birds out of season. A boy with a gun finds it difficult not to shoot at any moving target of sufficient size.
" What is it steels the sportsman's heart ? It is his conscious pride of art."
And to this " conscious pride," even if the art is sadly to seek, the boy is peculiarly susceptible. Happily such long- shore sportsmen have not been active enough to banish either peregrine or raven. Both flourish to-day in South Cornwall as at intervals all along the west coast.
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