The continual levying of contributions on our colonies of sea-gulls, to the injury of a great number of the other species of birds that inhabit our sea-coasts, should also be greatly restricted. If this is not done we shall witness, within a period already in sight, a lamentable extermination of our shore- and sea-birds. And how grateful for protection many species show themselves! Wherever it is extended to them they enliven the landscape in the most pleasing way. So, too, it has been found that certain species of gulls have adapted themselves to a kind of nocturnal life in the neighbourhood of our great commercial ports. I may here mention as standing in special need of protection, and as wonderful adornments of our German landscape, whose preservation should find an advocate in every thoughtful man--the buzzard, the kestrel, the hobby-hawk, both our varieties of kite, the crane, the heron, the white and the black stork, the crested grebe, the water-hen, and the coot. All these enliven and embellish the landscape to a conspicuous extent, and should not be sacrificed to selfish interests. I knew an old gamekeeper, a native of the March of Brandenburg, who throughout the course of a long life had been taking care of a shooting estate, which had grown up with him, so to speak. He protected _his_ wild creatures, and was delighted at having a colony of storks’ nests and a group of badger burrows in _his_ woods. For long years he was able to preserve a primeval oak, the largest in the whole district, which in the year 1870 he named the “King’s Oak.” To-day no birds of prey breed any longer on this estate; the primeval village of badgers is in ruins, and irreverent hands have cut down the “King’s Oak.” But the old man, now that his time of service has expired, never sets foot on the estate, though he is passing the evening of his life in the neighbourhood. That was a man who had innate in him a just and reverent feeling for the preservation of the beauties and glories handed down to us from the far past, and who loved, and, so far as it was possible, guarded these wonders of nature. Let us once for all throw overboard the sharp distinction between “noxious” and “useful” animals, and within certain limits let us protect the whole world of animal and plant life. This would be the noblest form of game preservation, in the widest sense of the word.