I
The wild red deer can never again come down to drink at the Thames in
the dusk of the evening as once they did. While modern civilisation
endures, the larger fauna must necessarily be confined to parks or
restrained to well-marked districts; but for that very reason the
lesser creatures of the wood, the field, and the river should receive
the more protection. If this applies to the secluded country, far from
the stir of cities, still more does it apply to the neighbourhood of
London. From a sportsman's point of view, or from that of a naturalist,
the state of the river is one of chaos. There is no order. The Thames
appears free even from the usual rules which are in force upon every
highway. A man may not fire a gun within a certain distance of a road
under a penalty--a law enacted for the safety of passengers, who were
formerly endangered by persons shooting small birds along the hedges
bordering roads. Nor may he shoot at all, not so much as fire off a
pistol (as recently publicly proclaimed by the Metropolitan police to
restrain the use of revolvers), without a licence. But on the river
people do as they choose, and there does not seem to be any law at
all--or at least there is no authority to enforce it, if it exists.
Shooting from boats and from the towing-path is carried on in utter
defiance of the licensing law, of the game law (as applicable to wild
fowl), and of the safety of persons who may be passing. The moorhens
are shot, the kingfishers have been nearly exterminated or driven away
from some parts, the once common black-headed bunting is comparatively
scarce in the more frequented reaches, and if there is nothing else to
shoot at, then the swallows are slaughtered. Some have even taken to
shooting at the rooks in the trees or fields by the river with
small-bore rifles--a most dangerous thing to do. The result is that the
osier-beds on the eyots and by the backwaters--the copses of the
river--are almost devoid of life. A few moorhens creep under the
aquatic grasses and conceal themselves beneath the bushes, water-voles
hide among the flags, but the once extensive host of waterfowl and
river life has been reduced to the smallest limits. Water-fowl cannot
breed because they are shot on the nest, or their eggs taken. As for
rarer birds, of course they have not the slightest chance. The fish
have fared better because they have received the benefit of close
seasons, enforced with more or less vigilance all along the river. They
are also protected by regulations making it illegal to capture them
except in a sportsmanlike manner; snatching, for instance, is unlawful.
Riverside proprietors preserve some reaches, piscatorial societies
preserve others, and the complaint indeed is that the rights of the
public have been encroached upon. The too exclusive preservation of
fish is in a measure responsible for the destruction of water-fowl,
which are cleared off preserved places in order that they may not help
themselves to fry or spawn. On the other hand, the societies may claim
to have saved parts of the river from being entirely deprived of fish,
for it is not long since it appeared as if the stream would be quite
cleared out. Large quantities of fish have also been placed in the
river taken from ponds and bodily transported to the Thames. So that
upon the whole the fish have been well looked after of recent years.
The more striking of the aquatic plants--such as white
water-lilies--have been much diminished in quantity by the constant
plucking, and injury is said to have been done by careless navigation.
In things of this kind a few persons can do a great deal of damage. Two
or three men with guns, and indifferent to the interests of sport or
natural history, at work every day, can clear a long stretch of river
of waterfowl, by scaring if not by actually killing them. Imagine three
or four such gentry allowed to wander at will in a large game
preserve--in a week they would totally destroy it as a preserve. The
river, after all, is but a narrow band as it were, and is easily
commanded by a gun. So, too, with fish poachers; a very few men with
nets can quickly empty a good piece of water: and flowers like
water-lilies, which grow only in certain spots, are soon pulled or
spoiled. This aspect of the matter--the immense mischief which can be
effected by a very few persons--should be carefully borne in mind in
framing any regulations. For the mischief done on the river is really
the work of a small number, a mere fraction of the thousands of all
classes who frequent it. Not one in a thousand probably perpetrates any
intentional damage to fish, fowl, or flowers.
As the river above all things is, and ought to be, a place of
recreation, care must be particularly taken that in restraining these
practices the enjoyment of the many be not interfered with. The
rational pleasure of 999 people ought not to be checked because the
last of the thousand acts as a blackguard. This point, too, bears upon
the question of steam-launches. A launch can pass as softly and quietly
as a skiff floating with the stream. And there is a good deal to be
said on the other side, for the puntsmen stick themselves very often in
the way of every one else; and if you analyse fishing for minnows from
a punt you will not find it a noble sport. A river like the Thames,
belonging as it does--or as it ought--to a city like London, should be
managed from the very broadest standpoint. There should be pleasure for
all, and there certainly is no real difficulty in arranging matters to
that end. The Thames should be like a great aquarium, in which a
certain balance of life has to be kept up. When aquaria first came into
favour such things as snails and weeds were excluded as eyesores and
injurious. But it was soon discovered that the despised snails and
weeds were absolutely necessary; an aquarium could not be maintained in
health without them, and now the most perfect aquarium is the one in
which the natural state is most completely copied. On the same
principle it is evident that too exclusive preservation must be
injurious to the true interests of the river. Fish enthusiasts, for
instance, desire the extinction of water-fowl--there is not a single
aquatic bird which they do not accuse of damage to fry, spawn, or
full-grown fish; no, not one, from the heron down to the tiny grebe.
They are nearly as bitter against animals, the poor water-vole (or
water-rat) even is denounced and shot. Any one who chooses may watch
the water-rat feeding on aquatic vegetation; never mind, shoot him
because he's there. There is no other reason. Bitterest, harshest, most
envenomed of all is the outcry and hunt directed against the otter. It
is as if the otter were a wolf--as if he were as injurious as the
mighty boar whom Meleager and his companions chased in the days of dim
antiquity. What, then, has the otter done? Has he ravaged the fields?
does he threaten the homesteads? is he at Temple Bar? are we to run, as
the old song says, from the Dragon? The fact is, the ravages attributed
to the otter are of a local character. They are chiefly committed in
those places where fish are more or less confined. If you keep sheep
close together in a pen the wolf who leaps the hurdles can kill the
flock if he chooses. In narrow waters, and where fish are maintained in
quantities out of proportion to extent, an otter can work doleful woe.
That is to say, those who want too many fish are those who give the
otter his opportunity.
In a great river like the Thames a few otters cannot do much or lasting
injury except in particular places. The truth is, that the otter is an
ornament to the river, and more worthy of preservation than any other
creature. He is the last and largest of the wild creatures who once
roamed so freely in the forests which enclosed Londinium, that fort in
the woods and marshes--marshes which to this day, though drained and
built over, enwrap the nineteenth-century city in thick mists. The red
deer are gone, the boar is gone, the wolf necessarily destroyed--the
red deer can never again drink at the Thames in the dusk of the evening
while our civilisation endures. The otter alone remains--the wildest,
the most thoroughly self-supporting of all living things left--a living
link going back to the days of Cassivelaunus. London ought to take the
greatest interest in the otters of its river. The shameless way in
which every otter that dares to show itself is shot, trapped, beaten to
death, and literally battered out of existence, should rouse the
indignation of every sportsman and every lover of nature. The late Rev.
John Russell, who, it will be admitted, was a true sportsman, walked
three thousand miles to see an otter. That was a different spirit, was
it not?
That is the spirit in which the otter in the Thames should be regarded.
Those who offer money rewards for killing Thames otters ought to be
looked on as those who would offer rewards for poisoning foxes in
Leicestershire, I suppose we shall not see the ospreys again; but I
should like to. Again, on the other side of the boundary, in the tidal
waters, the same sort of ravenous destruction is carried on against
everything that ventures up. A short time ago a porpoise came up to
Mortlake; now, just think, a porpoise up from the great sea--that sea
to which Londoners rush with such joy--past Gravesend, past Greenwich,
past the Tower, under London Bridge, past Westminster and the Houses of
Parliament, right up to Mortlake. It is really a wonderful thing that a
denizen of the sea, so large and interesting as a porpoise, should come
right through the vast City of London. In an aquarium, people would go
to see it and admire it, and take their children to see it. What
happened? Some one hastened out in a boat, armed with a gun or a rifle,
and occupied himself with shooting at it. He did not succeed in killing
it, but it was wounded. Some difference here to the spirit of John
Russell. If I may be permitted to express an opinion, I think that
there is not a single creature, from the sand-marten and the
black-headed bunting to the broad-winged heron, from the water-vole to
the otter, from the minnow on one side of the tidal boundary to the
porpoise on the other--big and little, beasts and birds (of prey or
not)--that should not be encouraged and protected on this beautiful
river, morally the property of the greatest city in the world.