Destruction by Man 69 



had in Italy. They cannot read our books and 

 papers and when they meet a game warden they 

 do not know who he is nor what he is saying; 

 they only understand in a general way that he is 

 trying to stop them from doing what they think 

 they have a perfect right to do. They are 

 naturally hot-tempered and quick to resent what 

 they believe to be an injustice, and serious trouble 

 for the game warden is often the result. I 

 remember a few years ago, watching a surgeon 

 removing shot from the face of a policeman who 

 had been shot by an Italian poacher in the 

 Middlesex Fells Reservation, near Boston. He 

 had chased the man, who deliberately turned 

 around and let him have both barrels. I am 

 not defending the Italian shooter of song birds. 

 He is doing wrong and we must absolutely stop 

 him, but we shall be able to do this in a wiser, 

 surer way if we understand the kind of man we 

 have to deal with, and realize that he is not 

 entirely to blame for his attitude toward our 

 wild life. In another chapter I shall give some 

 suggestions for dealing with this problem. 



The negroes and poor-white folks of our south- 

 ern states are even worse than the ignorant 

 foreigners, for they slaughter our song birds, not 

 by scores but by hundreds and sometimes by 

 thousands. Sad to say, robins and other songsters 



