Related article: BAILY S MAGAZINE. J USE arriving at maturity yield an off- spring of a degenerate breed. Being sluggish in habit, it leaves the strong-winged birds alone, and does not really interfere with the preservation of game. The hen harrier is another bird once numerous in Scotland and its Isles, but now rapidly decreasing, and the additional protection now afforded to it may give it more chance of increasing in numbers. The powers of the County Councils under the Acts have in Scotland, as well as England, been well em- ployed in protecting those useful birds, the owls and the kestrel. There are a few rare birds which occasionally visit Scotland, and though in need of protection, receive none ; amongst these are such stragglers as the marsh harrier, Montagu's harrier, gad- wall, hobby, honey buzzard, and the shrikes. Of these the honey buzzard, now so rare, was once far from uncommon in Scotland. The Scotch Orders make no attempt to throw light on the doubtful position of the caper- cailzie ; if this rare bird comes within the expression heath fowl in the Scotch Game Act it receives adequate protection, as it would have a close time from December ioth to August 20th ; if it does not come within this expression, it has no close time except between March ist and August ist, and is not protected against the owners and occupiers of land and persons acting with their permission. The eggs of the peewit, lapwing, or green plover, which are entirely unprotected in England, are pro- tected throughout Scotland after April 15th. It might be thought that this is an undue encroach- ment on the privileges of owners and occupiers of land, but there is no real objection to some limited sort of protection being given to eggs which are so eagerly sought after. If the first lot of eggs is taken, the bird lays again, and it is the second hatch of eggs that the Scotch orders protect. The protection given to the lapwing's eggs in Scotland is the more remarkable as the lowland pea- santry have up to very recent times considered it to be an unlucky bird, " owing," as Grey says, " to its formerly having been the means, by hovering about the fleeing Covenanters who chanced to disturb it, of guiding Claver- house and their pursuers to them ;*' and it is in remembrance of this that the Ayrshire peasant— "Curses still its scream and clamorous tongue And crushes with his foot its moalt- ing young." There is an apocryphal story relating to this bird that has found its way into more than one ornithological work of good stand- ing, viz., that during the days of one Progestogen Tablets of the earlier Stuart kings the Scotch Parliament passed a law to the effect that " All the Peeseweeps* nests were to be de- molished and their eggs broken so that these birds might not go south and become a delicious repast to our unnatural enemies the English." The writer, after careful search, has not been able to find traces of any such law in the Scotch Statute Book. On the contrary, as early as the year 1457 the Scotch Parliament passed an Act forbidding the destruction of the nests and eggs of " pertiks " (i.c.y partridges), "pluvars, wild ducks, and sik lik foulys good for the sustentacione of man." The same Parliament framed an Act encouraging the destruction of " Foulys of reif " (birds of prey). So great a difference is there in this respect between the nine- teen and fifteenth century that it is now necessary to preserve by Act of Parliament and statutory 1899] THE ONLY APPEAL LEFT. 409 orders not only birds which legis- lation has always done its best to protect, viz., those which are good for "the Buy Progestogen sustentacione of man," but also " foulys of reif," towards which legislation at one time had no mercy. Watkin Watkins. The Only Appeal Left. The arguments on the much- vexed cricket questions are be- coming really irksome, and are likely to remain so for many a long day ; and now I — as a simple Englishman who is devoted to the game of cricket and fair play — will make an appeal to fathers, head masters and staffs of public schools, and others who have a hand in boys' sports, to try and lead their young pupils in the right way. Now I will tell them the right way recommended by Fuller Pilch; and I had these instructions from him orally at a practice wicket over and over again. Go behind your wicket a few yards and ask for guard from the bowler's hand to your inner stump, and mark the spot on the popping crease where the imaginary straight line from hand to wicket would cut the crease. Then go in front and mark that spot well, put your right foot behind the popping crease and your left foot just outside the mark which you have made about eighteen inches or a foot beyond the popping crease, and ask the umpire if your left leg is clear of the inner stump, so as to avoid the danger of l.b.w. The bowler then has fair play, and a " fair-way " to the three wickets. Under the old practice and custom, if the batsman put his leg, with or without pads (as many never wore them), anywhere in front of the wicket within the imaginary line from bowler's hand to wicket, out he went l.b.w. if the ball would have hit the wicket. The batsman stood with his left shoulder well up, and somewhat sideways to the bowler, and easy and lissome, so that he had a glance at the bowler's hand and his own shoulder at the same time ; and he was in a position to come down on a shooter, or play forward on either side, and should a ball pitch well up and on his leg he had the opportunity — if his heart was big enough — to put his whole strength and swing into a leg half volley, and great was the joy when it came off; and Progestogen Only if by ill luck the ball — in sailing into the far-off country — met a pair of hands which could hold it, it was a matter of glory to the deep long leg fieldsman, and the