At the same time utterly aimless as well as venomous
damage is frequently wrought ; and such excesses have multiplied and intensified since the War. Some of us made this very week a second round of visits to a number of birds' nests—including a long-tailed tit's with eggs---discovered a week or more earlier. Every single one was torn down, presumably by children. Perhaps the only cure is on the lines of the answer of the Japanese statesman, asked how they created so ardent and general a patriotism among his people. " It is quite easy," he said. " We teach it in the elementary schools." The duty of preservation—of birds' nests as of trees—is a neglected subject. It should be instilled not negatively as an alien duty, but positively as an expression of local and of civic pride. You find here and there—as in parts of the Forest of Dean—an intense county pride that preserves by the force of public opinion. It is not harder to encourage such a sentiment than to rebuff it.
BEACH THOMAS,
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