* * * * BMDS AND LIGHTHOUSES.
It is good news that the Ulster Society for the Protection of Birds intends when possible to prevent the great loss of bird life at the lighthouses. The most lamentable destruction I know of is to be seen every spring and every autumn round about a lighthouse between St. Davids and Fishguard iii Pembrokeshire. The loss among migrants, especially small warblers, is 'proof enough that the lighthotele stands on a popular route ; and it is more than a mere Inference that the Ulster lighthouses (three of them in especial) bar the same road. They are like block houses armed with machine gun.. The Ulster society has brought about, with the co-operation of Senator Campbell, Mr. John Devlin and others, the passing of the best law of protection on record. This North Irish Act is better than ours ; and is likely to be taken as a model in Scotland. England leads in provision of sanctuaries, and among other efforts none has saved so much life as the erection of perching round a number of lighthouses. No reform is more urgently needed than the extension of such perches. What happens is that the birds, which often prefer to migrate at night, dash themselves against the glass and fall dead and maimed round about the tower. The bird that seems to suffer most is the willow wren. Its numbers sue immense : tens of thousands must cross the Irish Channel in
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