The Sun.
London, England, 1869-03-13 00:00:00

PRESERVATIO.Y OF SEA BIRDS.

From New Zealand not long since a cry came forth that
the small birds were getting day by day scarcer and scarcer,
Early navigators had spoken with delight of the melodious
notes with which the feathered songsters filled the woods'
Now scarcely a note is to be heard. " The silence of our
summer mornings," wrote a colonist, "is like a note struck
out of natural melody." The common rat had worked
all this mischief, robbing the ne Is of their eggs,
and devouring the young fledglings. And now
a complaint is made that in England cer-
tain birds—chiefly sea-birds—are being rapidly
destroyed. In this case, it is to a cause of quite a diffe-
rent character that the destruction of the birds is ascribed.
Can our .readers guess what that cause may be ? As
Madame de Sevignd would have said, we " give them the
riddle in ten ;" and we might give them a hundred
guesses without their lighting on the truth. The ladies
and the fashion are the cause of the terrible destruction of
sea-birds. We have it on the authority of a Fellow of the
Royal Society. Mr. Flowers states that " the fashion
adopted by ladies, of wearing feathers in their hats
and bonnets, has resulted in the terrible destruction
of grebes, kingfishers, seagulls, &c." So far has this
destruction proceeded that the Manx authorities
obtained a special Act of Parliament—not, indeed, to pre-
vent ladies from wearing feathers in their hats, but to
prevent the destruction of sea-birds on the coasts of the
Isle of Man. And the reason they allege for desiring the
preservation of the birds will perhaps seem to many as sur-
prising as the cause of the birds' destruction. It appears
that the cries of the birds are a more effectual warning to
seamen of the dangers of a rock-bound coast than light-
houses or fog-bells. In storms, doubtless, the roar of the
breakers would drown the cries of the birds. Yet birds
when they please can make hideous noises. Audubon speaks
of one "which utters a shriek so loud that the woods echo
for miles around to the dismal sound." And White
of Selborne, says he has " known a whole village up in
arms on account of the cries of the white owl, imagining
the churchyard to be full of goblins and spectres." It has
been calculated that within a short time last year 230,000
eggs and young birds were destroyed along only eighteen
miles of the coast of Yorkshire. It is time that something
were done to save these useful creatures. We fear ladies
will hardly adopt Mr. Flowers's suggestion, that they
should leave off wearing feathers in their hats, nor is it
likely that an Act of Parliament will be brought in to
render the wearing of feathers a misdemeanour, punish-
able by the confiscation of the offending ornaments.
But we may help the sea-birds in other ways.
Bustards, storks, and cranes have been lost to this country
in long past ages for want of efficient protection ; it will
not do to let seagulls, grebes, and kingfishers be destroyed
likewise. We must watch our sea-birds as carefully as
we have been watching our river fish ; and the process
will doubtless be as effective in one case as in the other.
Nature, says the Poet Laureate, is " careless of the type ;
she cares for nothing ; all must go ;" and if Nature
operate in this particular case through the fashions, her
destructive influence is likely to be none the less effective.
It is in the power of man, however, to limit her action,
or at least to delay its effects ; and this is a case in which
it behoves us to exercise this power.—Daily News.

Archbishop Manning is now in France, and is
expected in London in the middle of next week.

CHURCH DISPUTES.—Mr. Arthur Helps, in
Good Words, says : " I am lost in astonishment when I
contemplate the questions,' as they are called, which are
debated by the different religious parties, and respecting
which they become furious. Vestments, iutonings, pro-
cessions, altar-cloths, rood-screens, and genuflexions, are
made to be matters of the utmost importance; and all the
while the really great questions are in abeyance. It
reminds me of children playing at marbles on the slopes of
a volcano, which has already given sure signs of an ap-
proaching eruption."
SHELL EXPLOSION AT WOOLWICH ARSENAL.—
An accident occurred at about eight o'clock an evening or
two back, at the Leal Rooms of the Shell Foundry at
Woolwich Arsenal, by which three men, named John
Merrick, John Early, and James Fuller, were severely
injured. It appears that they, with three others, were
melting the lead off some condemned 40-pounder Aim-
strong segment shells, by placing them in a bath of red
hot metal, held in huge cauldrons, and one of the shells,
which had, through inadvertence, been returned as
"empty," must have still held its bursting charge or
powder, and, in consequence, no sooner had the charge
become ignited by the heat of the metal, than the shell
exploded, dashing the fragments around, and scattering
the scalding metal over the unfortunate men attending
the operation. Several pieces of the shell burst tl °
the roof, tearing the solid frames and thick shee:trt of g a
gulash:-
into splinters. Happily the injuries received are n
fatal nature, though Early and Fuller are terribly bruised
and scalded.