Post, Thabanchu, and Newberry, had fled to this place from Ladybrand during the night, of which, however, we knew nothing, only that their wagons were on the way yesterday afternoon. We took up our position at four o'clock this morning, after going for three hours on horseback during the night. I took up a position at Koorn Spruit on the upper and lower side, where the main road from Bloemfontein crosses Koorn Spruit. When the news began to . . . we saw their big guns exactly on this side of Sanna's Poort. As I had [? no guns] with me I resolved to wait until the guns on the side of P. de Wet fired at them, as I was then fully convinced that the enemy from Thabanchu and Newberry were between us. Our guns then began to fire at them from the east, when they fled with the greatest speed to the drift where we had positions. I succeeded, as the burghers obeyed and did not fire a shot or show themselves from the sides of the spruit until the enemy were near us. We allowed them to approach until they were close to the ravine with their guns, as they knew nothing of us. As soon as we fired they retired in full force to within 1,500 yards from us, but we succeeded in killing at once the horses of four or five of the six or seven guns, thus preventing them from retiring, and the artillery were obliged to leave the guns to their fate, and only escaped with two guns to the above-mentioned distance of 1,500 yards up to the station buildings on the other side of Koorn Spruit, from where they opened a heavy fire on us, both rifle and gun fire, which lasted about three hours and a half, and they also left the two guns in the lurch, and fled in full force to . . . and were pursued by us, chiefly by the men of Bethlehem and Winburg, who then came over from their position in my direction. The dams of the Waterworks in the Modder River prevented those men from crossing quickly. We took about 200 prisoners. In the fight they took the killed and wounded away. On the battlefield between me and where the men stood there remained. . . of the enemy. We also took . . . mule wagons. There were killed and five wounded on our side Lt. . . . Attaché (Dutch Indian Army). . . . According to the official reports, the number of English dead and wounded was rather under 600, but it will be seen from the following extracts that the English losses mounted very rapidly in the Boers' estimation : Bethlehem Official Report. No. 22. Brandfort: April 6, 1900.—Captain Reynders telegraphs: Two of my men have just come in from the Waterworks at Sanna's Post, reporting that Chief Commandant C. P. de Wet gave battle to the south of Thabanchu in the direction of Kaffir River. We took 459 prisoners and twelve wagons and carts, and there were 100 British dead and wounded. Our loss, three dead and five wounded. . . . ... A telegram received from De Villiers at Dewetsdorp begins: Waterworks retaken, made 900 prisoners, 600 dead and wounded. On our side five dead and nine wounded. There are several other incidents, such as the fighting about Stormberg, the relief of Kimberley, and a good deal of desultory fighting about Brandfort, which are touched upon in these bulletins, but they are hardly of sufficient interest to make them worth reproduction. There are several bulletins, however, relating to the investment of Wepener which may be of interest. It will be remembered that Wepener is a town in the south-east of the Free State, where Colonel Dalgety with a small garrison found himself isolated at the beginning of April and surrounded by the Boers. The attack on the place by the Boers was one of the most determined which they made during the course of the war, and the resistance of the small garrison one of the most heroic made by the English. It was finally relieved by the diversions created by the other English forces operating nearer Bloemfontein, though, as will be seen by the following report, the Boers often thought they were on the point of being successful. Bethlehem Official Report. No. 22. Official report from Wepener, April 9. This morning, at sunrise, fight with guns and small arms. The enemy were attacked at three points. ... Wepener: April 10, 1900.-Captain Kirstein telegraphs from Jammersdrift, April 9, 1900: There was heavy fighting to-day from six o'clock in the morning till six o'clock in the evening; on our side there were seven wounded and killed. The loss of the enemy is unknown. Wepener is taken possession of by our burghers (sic); the enemy is entirely surrounded by our burghers, and the force of the enemy is about 1,500. We took many of their positions. The burghers are full of courage, and wanting to go forward to break the force of the enemy. We all hope that the enemy will soon surrender. On the following day De Wet, who seems to have been a better judge than this captain, telegraphs from Hoffmans Rust near Wepener: Bethlehem Official Report. No. 24. The fighting still continues; the entrenchments of the enemy are such that it seems to me it may be some days before we can drive them out. And on April 12 he telegraphs that fighting still continues, though he is hopeful that if he can gain some point of vantage the English will have to surrender. But he only admits nineteen casualties on his own side. On the 13th Captain Kirstein reports that fighting still goes on, and on the same day De Wet is hopeful that the English will surrender on the following day; the Boers are still hopeful as late as the 20th, though the siege had to be raised on the 24th. It is much to be regretted that these bulletins have arrived in so fragmentary a condition; but enough of them is extant to show that at any rate in the Free State the farmers were not put off with grossly untrue accounts of the state of the war, and that even in official veracity the Boer is not quite so bad as at one time the bellicose spirit of the Jingo papers thought it necessary to paint him. BASIL WILLIAMS. THE RESULTS OF WILD BIRD PROTECTION. WE ought by this time to be able to point to definite results from the legislation for the protection of birds which has been added to the statute book since the year 1880. This is not the place to give a history of these Acts, which is, moreover, told in a very clear and practical way in Messrs. Marchant and Watkins's book on this subject. It is sufficient to say that the law has taken more birds under its protection year by year, and that any County Council, by applying to the secretary of the Local Government Board, can now get practically any area specially protected,' which means that no eggs may be taken there in the breeding time. They can also ask for particular birds of local rarity or interest to be protected all the year round, which things the Secretary of State usually grants with a cheerful mind; and all that remains for the local authorities to do when the birds are granted this protection is to see that they get it, which is not always quite the same thing. Perhaps the best results of the Acts are seen where local societies exist for the protection of birds. As soon as a body, and not an individual, tries to set the law in force, it receives support from public opinion. The private person who tries to do the same runs the risk of being regarded as a persecutor of his own species. Several of these societies employ regular watchers to look after specially protected areas during the breeding time. This does immense good on bits of coast like the Chesil beach, or the Norfolk sandhills, or the Suffolk and Essex coasts and marshes, near Orfordness or the mouths of the Blackwater and Essex rivers. Egg gathering on these shores was formerly a regular business. When the birds swarmed on the shingle and marram it was an attractive if mischievous occupation, and when only occasionally indulged in by local egg pirates did no great harm. The walk across the sea marshes, over which the fresh wind blew the hot sands like fine rain from the sandhills beyond, with peewits and redshanks shrieking over Wild Birds' Protection Acts, 1880-1896. By J. R. V. Marchant and W. Watkins. London: R, H. Porter, Princes Street, Cavendish Square, head, to the foot of the 'marram hills' and shingle binks, where the eggs of terns, ringed plover, peewits, and shanks' were to be had in any number for the trouble of picking them up, and then the taking of a swim in the shallow sea beyond, had in it a spice of sport and adventure. But besides these occasional raiders there were and are the professional egg robbers, who take the eggs, some to sell in the markets, some to send to dealers. One family on the Suffolk coast owned to having taken 3,000 eggs in one season. Though not so bad as the egg trade in Labrador, where ships were freighted with the spoil, the damage done was very serious. The bird-watcher's work is a new form of gamekeeping, of the humane kind. There are many who would willingly exchange duties, and spend the six weeks of early summer between the marshes and the sea, enjoying the salt air and glancing lights from sky and ocean, and counting up the daily increase of the eggs and young of the white-winged birds of Neptune's poultry yard. As a rule, it is easy to get competent watchers, but not quite so easy to induce them to give evidence if a raid is made. The writer overheard an old fowler, who was so employed, refuse to produce the eggs which he had taken from the offenders, and which were needed as pièces de conviction, on the ground that they were addled, and that he had thrown them away because they smelt unpleasant. Recollecting the fine mixture of fishheads, dead crabs, seaweed, and cabbage stalks in his garden by the quay, I thought this an unnecessary piece of delicacy. But it passed for the occasion. Breakers of the law are often most ingenious in their excuses. They usually pose as the injured party. This is seldom better done than by a couple of soldiers back on leave, who were 'pulled' for taking eggs on a protected foreshore. They arranged for a number of sympathisers to be present, who supported their arguments by obvious approval. Their story was that, being back home for a short interval after fighting the enemies of their country-when one of them had killed two Matabeles to speak to,' besides others he might have killed, but did not claim, as he wasn't sure if he had shot them-they had gone down on a Sunday morning to get some eggs, as they always used to when they lived at home. That they had been stopped, their eggs taken from them, and, to add injury to insult, were now summoned. 'How should they know what laws had been made "behind their backs" when they were away at the war?' they asked indignantly. It was all most ingeniously done, and though the printed notices were posted opposite the houses where the men were staying, they were not unnaturally let off without a fine. But on the particular spot where these men were poaching there are now some five or six hundred pairs of terns, lesser terns, shore curlews, redshanks, and peewits nesting, where ten years ago there were not one-sixth of the number. In regard to birds in general, the English public have little to reproach themselves with. Our bird population is enormous, innumerable, and still increasing. You see nothing like it on the continent of Europe, even though in particular places, such as the swamps of the Danish coast or of Andalusia, or on the Dutch polders, or in the Pontine marshes, particular species make a great show. But nowhere do common birds-rooks, sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes, larks, finches, yellow-hammers, tits, robins, and the rest— swarm as they do in the fat and smiling fields and lawns and woods of England. But this is not exactly the result which was aimed at by such a wide scheme of wild bird protection as is now part of the law. Its object was rather to extend help to birds which, though. naturally numerous, are also very local in their breeding-grounds, and to increase the number of rare kinds which had been killed down or driven away by persecution. Sea-fowl, for instance, and shore-fowl are very numerous locally; but they only breed on the coastline or near it. Consequently, if you take a map, the narrow line round the coast represents the sole superficies of these birds' breeding ground, while the whole of the middle of the map is possible nesting-ground for the rest. The rock-fowl were the first of all birds to be protected in the precipices where they build. To these homes of the brood of the sea are now added miles after miles of sandhills, tens of thousands of acres of marshes and 'saltings,' of fen and foreshore, shingle banks and bennet-dunes on the eastern coast, the nesting-ground of the sorely persecuted shore birds and wild fowl. Lastly, there are particular haunts of special birds, islets where the eider ducks or shearwaters or stormy petrels breed, or inland bits of forest or fen, where the rough-legged buzzard or marsh harrier or bittern is expected to return, or where the large grebes or bearded tits still remain. The County Councils themselves have as yet no reports on the |