CHAPTER XXXVI 



THE RELATIONS OF BIRDS TO MAN 



BIRDS are principally beneficial to mankind. They are things 

 of beauty and add happiness to our lives by their songs. They 

 are largely responsible for the destruction of insect pests and 

 other obnoxious animals, and they destroy countless numbers 

 of weed seeds. The value of domesticated birds as producers 

 of meat, eggs, and feathers is estimated in millions of dollars. 



Commercial Value. - - With the exception of the domesticated 

 species, birds are now of very little commercial value. In some 

 localities they are persecuted to a considerable extent for their 

 eggs, which are used as food. This is true of certain gulls, 

 terns, herons, murres, ducks, and albatrosses. Egging is not 

 carried on now as much as formerly, since many of the col- 

 onies of birds have been driven away from their breeding places, 

 or the government has prohibited the practice. In 1854 more 

 than five hundred thousand murres' eggs were collected on the 

 Farallone Islands and sold in the markets of San Francisco in 

 two months. 



Game birds have been and still are in certain localities a 

 common article of food. Most of them, however, have been 

 so persistently hunted by sportsmen and market men that they 

 are now of no great commercial importance. Several species, 

 like the wood duck and heath hen, have been brought to the 

 verge of extinction. The repeating shotgun, introduction of 

 cold-storage methods, and easy transportation facilities soon 

 depleted the vast flocks of prairie chickens and other game 

 birds of the Middle West. One New York dealer in 1864 re- 

 ceived twenty tons of these birds in one consignment. The 



376 



