REPORTS OF AUXILIARY SOCIETIES. 357 



Nor are particular sections alone affected. On account of their migratory hab- 

 its, birds spread over vast sections of the country; and those fortunate enough 

 to escape in the north the terrific fusilade of men whom it is an insult to the 

 true fraternity to call "sportsmen,'' are pursued by these miserable "pot hunt- 

 ers" into their winters quarters in the south and there mercilessly slain. One 

 of these murderers of the innocents prepared in 18S4, during a three months' 

 trip along the South Carolina coasts, no less than 11,000 skins. Whole colo- 

 nies of songsters have been swept away in Florida and Texas, while Cobb's 

 Island, Virginia, once a noted breeding place for gulls and terns, has been 

 wholly depopulated of its beautiful denizens. One New York taxidermist has 

 been known to have in his shop the skins of 30,000 of one species of birds, 

 prepared expressly for millinery purposes. 



Thus the commercial item is by far the largest in the category and its start- 

 ling figures indicate what rapid progress we are making toward the extermina- 

 tion of our American birds — approximating results already reached in the case 

 of the bison, and nearly reached in the case of the deer. Indeed, no one will 

 question the facts when we observe that in every village and on nearly every 

 lady's hat. one or more of the slain beauties of the air are to be seen. It is mod- 

 erate to assume that if in this city there are ten thousand homes, there are at 

 least twenty thousand dead bird ornaments, to say nothing of those on sale; 

 and if many of these are. of foreign importation, it is fair to assume that an 

 equal number of domestic birds has been exchanged for them. 



This wholesale slaughter of bird life for scientific and pseudo scientific 

 purposes, for recreation and adornment, not only promises to rob coast and 

 forest, orchard and meadow of their graceful melodious denizens, but it works 

 another and a greater evil. You remember Longfellow's beautiful poem, 

 "The birds of Killingworth;" how the irate farmers exterminated all the birds 

 because the crows plucked up the corn, and the songsters ate the fruit; and 

 what consequences followed. The poem is based on a fact. 



It is universally rcognized as dangerous to disturb what is known as the 

 " balance of nature," or that condition of things in which the lower orders of 

 creation act as checks upon each other, thus preventing an overgrowth of every 

 destructive force. Now, it is a well-known fact that birds play a very 

 important part in maintaining this balance of nature. Most of them are known 

 to be of the insectivorous order; that is, insects forming the chief, if not 

 indeed the sole ingredient of their food. This is conceded to be true of song- 

 sters and the smaller birds in general. But recent investigations have shown 

 that birds known as outlaws, such as hawks, owls, crows, jays, etc., feed to such 

 an extent upon insects and other pests that their destruction is fraught with 

 positive harm to farmers and horticulturists. Crows proverbially have a rep- 

 utation as " corn pullers," but the depredation thus done to the farmer's fields 

 is quite inconsiderable, and is confined to a few days in the year, while for the 

 rest of the season, cut-worms, grasshoppers, and more noxious insects consti- 

 tute their main supply of food. Many farmers, being aware of this, deem it 

 to their own advantage to feed the crows — giving them their board — during 

 the time of sprouting corn in consideration of the service rendered during the 

 balance of the season. From time immemorial the owls and hawks have been 

 anathematized as totally depraved, or as the natural foes of the farmer; but 

 more recent and thorough examinations by ornithologists have established 

 the fact that the principal diet of these birds of prey consists of field mice, 

 grasshoppers, and a variety of insects considered detrimental to the agricultur- 



