266 Missouri State Horticultural Society. 



A few familiar illustrations will prove how this may be so. I 

 quote from an agricultural report : " It is the custom in some dis- 

 tricts of this country, as soon as the planting is finished and other 

 spring work done on the farm, for all the men, old and young, to 

 assemble with guus, and after choosing sides, as 'tis called, to have 

 a shooting match ; that is, each party tries to kill the greatest 

 number of birds and animals within the circuit of several miles, or 

 the limits of the township or county. Such a match, some years 

 ago, came off in a town of Pennsylvania. The party was numer- 

 ous and the slaughter immense, in fact, nearly amthe birds were 

 killed, and as the migrations had passed, it being the last of May, 

 scarcely a bird was seen in the neighborhood during the whole 

 summer. The result was the cut worms ravaged the cabbage fields, 

 the apple tree caterpillars and borers were so numerous that whole 

 orchards were destroyed, and army worms and injurious insects 

 were so abundant that there was hardly one grainfield that was not 

 damaged to the extent, at least, of one-third the value of the 

 entire crop. N'or were these injuries confined to that year, but 

 many seasons in succession bore witness to the folly and wickedness 

 of that wholesale destruction." 



Again about the year 1820', in North Bridgewater, Mass., the 

 birds were killed in such quantities that cart loads of them were 

 sold to farmers for fertilizing the soil ! There was then, for some 

 time afterwards, a notable scarcity of birds in all that vicinity. Soon 

 the herbage began to show signs of injury ; tufts of withered grass 

 appeared and spread out widely into circles of a seared and burnt 

 complexion. Though cause and effect were so near together, yet 

 they were' not logically regarded by the inhabitants at that time. 

 Modern entomology, however, would have explained to them the 

 cause of this phenomenon in the increase of the larvse of injurious 

 insects, usually kept in check by the birds which had been destroyed 

 at that shooting match. These are not isolated cases nor even rare 

 instances. Consulting the local newspapers the inquirer will find 

 many cases of similar shooting matches in different sections of the 

 country, with long accounts of the different birds destroyed. 



In Europe a similar system of extermination prevails. Fred- 

 erick von Tschudi, president of the Agricultural Society of Canton, 

 St. Gall, Switzerland, writes of this practice as follows : " But 

 the cause which more than all others exercises a still more fatal 

 influence on the diminution of our most useful birds of passage, 

 is the extraordinary hunt they are subjected to by the Italians. 

 It is well known that during the spring migration, and still 



