Efforts to Check the Slaughter 85 



heads were jerked off from the tender bodies with the 

 hand, and the dead birds tossed into heaps. Others 

 knocked the young fledghngs out of the nests with long 

 poles, their weak and untried wings failing to carry them 

 beyond the clutches of the assistant, who, with hands 

 reeking with blood and feathers, tears the head off the 

 living bird, and throws its quivering body upon the 

 heap. 



Thousands of young birds lay among the ferns and 

 leaves dead, having been knocked out of the nests by 

 the promiscuous tree-slashing, and dying for want of 

 nourishment and care, which the parent birds, trapped 

 off by the netter, could not give. The squab-killers 

 stated that "about one-half of the young birds in the 

 nests they found dead," owing to the latter reason. 

 Every available Indian, man and boy, in the neighbor- 

 hood was in the employ of buyers and speculators, kill- 

 ing squabs, for which they received a cent apiece. 



Early in the morning, Len, with his land-looker's 

 pack and half-ax, and the writer, started out to "look 

 land." Taking the course indicated by the obliging 

 small boy, we soon struck into an old Indian trail which 

 led us through another portion of the nesting, where 

 the birds for countless numbers surpassed all calculation. 

 The chirping and noise of wings were deafening and 

 conversation, to be audible, had to be carried on at the 

 top of our voices. On the shores of the lake where 

 the birds go to drink, when flushed by an intruder, the 



