It seems, therefore, that the real issue is between Natural History as opposed to Unnatural History. On the one hand, grouse, pheasants (“semi-domesticated exotics”), and partridges (very likely imported), reared at immense cost for slaughter: on the other, all these infinitely more varied and natural and gracious creatures—the true sylphs and elves of our woodlands—whose glad, free beauty so thrilled Meredith, and drew from him that impassioned cry:
“For joy in the beating of wings on high,
…
My soul shoots into the breast of a bird,
As it will for sheer love till the last long sigh.”
And all this wild, winged life possesses a twofold beauty: for it is beautiful both in itself, and—as poetry all down the ages has borne witness—in its influence on the mind of man.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] “British Mammals,” 1903.
[11] I can speak from a fairly extensive acquaintance with keepers in various districts; and (to quote impartial opinion) a pheasant-shooting friend lately observed to me, while discussing the absurd destruction of kestrels: “The English gamekeeper is a fool: there’s nothing to be said for him.” And Mr. J. G. Millais, another sportsman, in his great work on “British Mammals,” remarks that “gamekeepers are often among the most unobservant of men” (vol. ii., 1905). Cf. also, e.g., Seebohm’s “British Birds” (Falconidæ, passim).
[12] W. H. Hudson, “The Land’s End,” 1908.