BIRD-PROTECTION LAW.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SrEcrATon."] you allow me to say that the writer of the interesting article on "Fruit Trees and Finches" in the Spectator of February 24th does not state quite accurately the law with regard to the protection of wild birds ? The Act does not "protect some few rare kinds of birds all the year round," nor are there a few which it "does not protect at all." What the law does is to appoint a close season from March 1st to August 1st, and during that period to protect a certain number of scheduled birds (largely wild-fowl) from every one, including owners and occupiers of land, and all other species of wild bird from every one except owners and occupiers of land. The protection of any bird during the remainder of the year, the addition of birds to the Schedule, the extension of the close time, &c., are matters left entirely to County Bird Protection Orders, issued by the Home Secretary on the application of the County Council. It would be an excellent thing if some twenty or thirty of our rarest birds were protected throughout the country by a general Act, so that the killing of them might be made absolutely illegal. As regards eggs, the Act is so far from "forbidding "the destruction of nests and eggs equally with the bird; themselves," that each Order must name every species whose eggs it is proposed to protect, or must define a certain area within which it is, proposed to protect all eggs.—I am,
Sir, &c., L. GARDINER,
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