The Law and the Peewit
The eggs of plovers in some parts are now receiving protection all the year round, the Board of Agriculture having given notice that peewits feed wholly to the benefit of field crops and do no injury whatever to the interests of farmers. The greedy and the thoughtless have taken plovers' eggs in unreasonable numbers, and total protection is to be welcomed. It may be argued that peewits' eggs are a rare delicacy, and wholesome food; that where they may be taken a limited number of old men may earn a few shillings; that a law superior to find-and-take would be difficult to enforce; also that taking the eggs until about the middle of April does not materially affect the numbers of peewits. What with the effects of frosts and the destruction of eggs during the tillage of fields, such as harrowing the fallows and rolling the grass and cornfields, where peewits mostly nest, the greater portion of the first layings cannot in any case survive. But those allowed to take eggs for the sake of profit will not stop at early ones, and peewits are such useful birds that thorough protection for all the eggs would be the best policy.
