Mr. A. Newton, on Monday, read a paper of much
interest to naturalists. He wants Parliament to fix a "close time" during which nobody should carry a gun or shoot anything, and pro- tested against the bird murder going on everywhere. A little 'care would have preserved the bustard, now extinct ; the owl, everywhere shot, kills vermin ; and the hawk, considered the gamekeeper's enemy, is "one of the sanitary police of nature," snaking sickly birds his quarry. The slaughter of the white gulls off the coast is simply murder, the poor birds being often killed when their wing feathers cannot be secured. Even when they can, Mr. Newton pronounces the slaughter cruel, as the bird is killed while feeding its young ; and a correspondent of the Times says he has known the wings torn off and the birds left to die slowly without them—an atrocity which would be almost incre- dible, did we not know that gentlemen of the best class spend hours in shooting pigeons let out of a box for the purpose, not to eat them, or even to enjoy the pursuit of them, but simply to test their own skill and win bets. Mr. Frank Bucklaucl made, at the same séance, the pleasant statements that the supply of salmon was increasing, and the fish would soon be is. a pound, while oysters in five or six years would be a penny apiece. That is something, but they used to be, not so long ago, only four- pence a dozen.
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