GREAT BIRD GATHERINGS 39 



On the contrary, we can affirm that a majority of the 

 inhabitants of this country are desirous of preserving 

 its beautiful wild bird life. Those who are on the 

 other side may be classified as the barbarians of means 

 who are devoted mainly to sport, and would cheer- 

 fully see the destruction of most of our birds above 

 the size of a thrush for the sake of that disastrous 

 exotic, the semi-domestic pheasant of the preserves; 

 secondly, the private collector, that "curse of rural 

 England"; and last but not least, the regiment of 

 horrible women who persist in decorating their heads 

 with aigrettes and carcasses of slaughtered birds. In 

 the forty odd years that have passed since a first 

 attempt was made to give some protection to our wild 

 birds much has been done in England; and happily 

 in other lands and continents occupied by men of 

 British race our example is being followed. Would 

 that the Americans had begun to follow it three 

 decades sooner, since owing to their tardiness they 

 have many and great losses to lament. It is not 

 strange that the crested screamer, with many other 

 noble species, has quickly been done to death in a 

 country overrun by Italians, when it is remembered 

 that in the United States of America the passenger 

 pigeon, the most abundant species in all that conti- 

 nent, has been extirpated in very recent times without 

 an effort having been made to save it. Now that it is 

 gone the accounts given by Audubon and Fenimore 

 Cooper of its numbers when its migrating flocks 

 darkened the sun at noon read like the veriest fables 

 — inventions as wild as those of the crested screamer 



