18 RECORDS OF THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 



Country residents, or persons who shoot birds for a livelihood, 

 are not more culpable in this respect than are the dwellers in 

 large cities. I refer more particularly to youthful gunners, who 

 go to the outlying suburbs on Saturday afternoons, and further 

 afield on holidays throughout the year, and shoot at every bird 

 they come across. Many of the birds killed are of inestimable 

 value to the orchardist, horticulturist, and agriculturist, ridding 

 his trees or land of many injurious insect pests, without fee or 

 reward. In the breeding season, too, many birds are killed while 

 incubating their eggs or engaged in family cares, leaving either 

 their eggs to rot in the nest, or young ones to perish miserably 

 from starvation. To a less extent, indiscriminate egg-collecting 

 by boys, is responsible for many birds either seeking safer nesting- 

 sites, or being driven away from the environment of the cities and 

 suburbs, or their numbers decreased. In ninety -nine cases out of 

 a hundred, it is due to thoughtlessness and not want of heart, and 

 the mischief wrought should be pointed out to them and dis- 

 couraged by their elders. 



In the United States of America, this is done by many 

 teachers in the public schools, who encourage the children 

 regularly to learn the names of the birds around them, and point 

 out the folly of destroying what may in after life be beneficial to 

 their pursuits, and a source of pleasure to them. Bird-day there 

 is also an annual institution, like Arbour-day. 



While on the subject, and ere it is too late, I wish to place on 

 record the many other agencies at work at the present time, that 

 are tending to rapidly drive away, diminish, or ultimately exter- 

 minate many species of our native birds in New South Wales. 



It is inevitable that by the steady growth of cities and their 

 suburbs throughout the State, and the consequent clearing and 

 burning of scrub lands, and drainage of swamps, many birds are 

 either destroyed or driven away from their former haunts. This 

 is only a natural sequence. Take the metropolis as an instance. 

 The Emu no longer roams shrough the scrub between Botany Bay 

 and Sydney Harbour, as in Governor Phillip's time, and as I have 

 pointed out elsewhere,^ many species once common in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Sydney within the memory of present residents, now 

 no longer frequent the County of Cumberland. On the 1st 

 August, 189.5, between Botany and La Perouse, I found many 

 nests of the New Holland Honey-eater, containing eggs or young 

 ones. Numbers of men who had previously been engaged in 

 felling the scrub, were, at the time of my visit, occupied in setting 

 light to it in different places and burning it off". A strong north 

 wind was blowing at the time, and the tire quickly spread to the 



2 North— Austr. Assoc. Adv. Sci., Handbk. (Sydney Meeting), 1898. 

 p. 69. 



