10 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



single winter (1893-94) on the Big Lake and shipped from Horners- 

 ville, still visit the region in large numbers in their migrations 

 and many remain in mild winters, but the resident game birds 

 such as the Turkey, and summer residents like the Wood Duck 

 and llooiled Merganser arc decreasing rapidly and will, Hke the 

 Ivorybill, the Snakebird, the Canada Goose, several kinds of 

 ducks and herons, the Bald Eagle and Osprey, in fact like most 

 birds of larger size, disappear and become, as far as their beeding 

 in that part of Missouri is concerned, exterminated. 



VII. DECREASE OF BIRDS. 



There is no doubt that the gun is the main factor in the rapid 

 tlisappearance of all the larger birds. No amount of instruction 

 and law-making will prevent the killing of hawks and owls by 

 farmers and hunters, especially the latter, w^ho sees in every 

 large bird an enemy of his game, a competitor in the chase or 

 fishery. 



The reduction in the number of the smaller birds is the result of 

 quite different causes — causes which cannot be removed because 

 they are the unavoidable consequences of the transformation of 

 a wild, thinly inhabited land into a highly cultivated, thickly 

 settled one. With the felling of the trees, tree-inhabiting wild 

 creatures necessarily disappear; with the draining of the low- 

 lands, marsh birds cannot be expected any more; the drying-up 

 of the lakes diverts their animal life to other regions, the re- 

 moval of certain plants from a place makes the presence of certain 

 kinds of animal life impossible. When we consider how much 

 one organism is dependent on others, we do not wonder that an 

 annihila'ion of many forms of animal life, high and low, is in- 

 separably bound up with such a change as deforestation and 

 subsequent cultivation. While we see a few birds which for- 

 merly lived exclusively in the forest accommodate themselves 

 to the changed conditions and put up with substitutes, such as 

 orchards and artificial groves, many of the true forest-loving birds 

 invariably disappear with the forest and become exterminated 

 as far as that particular locality is concerned. Not counting the 

 scnib-oak Imrrens of the Ozarks as forest, because very few wood- 

 land birds find a home in them, we can say that only 25 per cent, 

 of the former forest area is left as such at present, and that there- 

 fore 75 per cent, of most of the woodland birds of Missouri have 

 gone since the white man began to settle in the state. But de- 



