Our real efforts should be directed against ourselves—that is to say, against the inordinate love of one thing in us at the expense of another. It ought, for instance, to be for all as it is for many, a greater loss never to see such birds as Kites, Buzzards, Peregrine Falcons, Ospreys, Eagles, Ravens, &c., than it is a gain to have a larger number of Pheasants, Partridges, Grouse, or Blackcock to the end of killing more of them; and it ought to be an infinitely greater pleasure not only to see a bird or other animal in life and nature, but even to know that it is so, than to hold it dead in our own poor possession. That this is largely not the case shows lack of taste, lack of imagination, lack of a true love of nature. Let us supply these wants in our proper selves, and "keep down" those redundancies which prey upon them, and the cruel extermination—now in active process—of so many beautiful and interesting forms of life will cease. By preserving our own "balance"—the proper proportion of our tastes and pleasures—we should be preserving that of nature. What, for instance, would not a proper balance of appreciation in women as between their own beauty and that of birds effect in favour of the latter?
Extermination is a real evil. The desire to check it is not mere sentimentality, as some writers seem to imagine. "Why," for instance, asks Sir Herbert Maxwell[1] (and he intends the question as a reductio ad absurdum), "should not insects, which are preyed upon by birds, be as much protected as the birds?" Certainly, if it would be ridiculous to save some most beautiful butterfly from disappearance at the hands of man, it would be equally so to save a Humming-Bird or Bird of Paradise; but, as Touchstone says, "much virtue in your if." It is marvellous how men, who would be in despair (yet not more so than myself) at the threatened destruction of some fine painting or piece of sculpture, can see with imperturbability the artificial extermination of a living work. I admit that, when we look at, say, the Laocoon, the Assumption, or a portrait by Rembrandt, it is difficult to bear in mind the relative proportions of human and divine genius, but reason should tell us how immeasurably superior are the works of nature to those of art. If we must love killing, yet let us not, even as pure egotists, tolerate making to
- ↑ I am quoting not the letter, but the spirit, and this from memory. If I misrepresent, therefore, I must apologise.
