and missed, I hate myself with an increasing hatred. I am convinced that this most excellent result might be arrived at by numbers and numbers of others, if they would only begin to do the same; for the pleasure that belongs to observation and inference is, really, far greater than that which attends any kind of skill or dexterity, even when death and pain add their zest to the latter. Let anyone who has an eye and a brain (but especially the latter), lay down the gun and take up the glasses for a week, a day, even for an hour, if he is lucky, and he will never wish to change back again. He will soon come to regard the killing of birds as not only brutal, but dreadfully silly, and his gun and cartridges, once so dear, will be to him, hereafter, as the toys of childhood are to the grown man.
Nor will the good effect stop here. Birds are but a part of the life on this our earth, and the hatred of destruction, once kindled by them, will, like the ripples made by a stone flung into the water, extend outwards through the whole animal and vegetable kingdom till it include, at last, man himself—yes, even the Chinese. Unfortunately, long before anything of this kind is likely to happen, all birds, except poultry, and, perhaps, a lingering sparrow or two, will have been destroyed. This seems a cheerless prospect, but, as usual (to write like an optimist), it has its brighter side. Women will then be no longer able to wear hats, to adorn which the most beautiful of earth's creatures have been ruthlessly slaughtered, and, therefore, faith in them will begin once more to revive. Faith in woman, we know, is a very important thing. A nation that has once lost it
