176 BULLETIN 14 6;, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



savagely responds. Away, away with headlong speed scatters and dissolves that 

 multitudinous host, and we hasten to secure our spoils. 



Writing of conditions in Argentina about the middle of the last 

 century, W. H. Hudson (1922) writes: 



The golden plover was then one of the abundant species. After its arrival 

 in September, the plains in the neighborhood of my home wore peopled with 

 immense floclse of this bird. Sometimes in hot summers the streams and 

 marshes would mostly dry up, and the aquatic-bird population, the plover in- 

 cluded, would shift their quarters to other districts. During one of these 

 droughty seasons, when my age was 9, there was a marshy ground 2 miles 

 from my home where a few small pools of water still remained, and to this 

 spot the golden plover would resort every day at noon. Thoy would appear 

 in flocks from all quarters, flying to it like starlings in England coming in 

 to some great roosthig center on a winter evening. I would then mount my 

 pony and gallop off joyfully to witness the spectacle. Long before coming in 

 sight of them the noise of their voices would be audible, growing louder as I 

 drew near. Coming to the ground, I would pull up my horse and sit gazing 

 with astonishment and delight at the spectacle of that immense multitude of 

 birds, covering an area of 2 or 3 acres, looking less like a vast flock than a 

 floor of birds, in color a rich deep brown, in strong contrast to the pale 

 gray of the dried-up ground all round them. A living, moving floor and a 

 sounding one as well, and the sound, too, was amazing. It was like the sea, 

 but unlike it in character since it was not deep ; it was more like the wind 

 blowing, let us say, on thousands of tight-drawn wires of varying thick- 

 nesses, vibrating them to shrill sound, a mass and tangle of 10,000 sounds. 

 But it is indescribable and unimaginable. 



Edward H. Forbush (1912) tells of two men who killed plover 

 enough to fill a tip car two-thirds full in one day, during a big 

 storm on Nantucket in the forties. Again he speaks of a great flight 

 which occurred there on August 29, 1863, " when golden plover and 

 Eskimo curlew landed on the island in such numbers as to almost 

 darken the sun. Between seven and eight thousand of these birds 

 were killed on the island and on Tuckernuck." He says that from 

 1860 on the species began to decrease, due to the demand created 

 by the failing supply of passenger pigeons, and that in 1890 alone 

 two Boston firms received from the West 40 barrels closely packed 

 with curlew and plover, with 25 dozen curlew and 60 dozen plover 

 to the barrel. 



By the end of the last century this species had about reached 

 its lowest ebb; it had become scarce where it once abounded; no 

 more big flights occurred; and in many places it was rarely seen. 

 But protective measures came in time to save it from extermination ; 

 the stopping of the sale of game and the removal of this species 

 from the game-bird list were badly needed. Since the last move 

 was made the species has shown some signs of recovery. Edwin 

 Bcaupre (1917) says that " after an absence of almost 15 years, the 



