Song Birds and Water Fowl 
not left in peace ; for certain pestilent fellows, 
thinking them excellent objects for target prac- 
tice, came thither, and destroyed large num- 
bers from time to time, one person boasting 
of having shot three hundred. As such a large 
quantity could be of no possible use to anyone, 
and as the swamp was often so impassable from 
water that many of them could only have been 
reached with great difficulty after being shot, it 
resulted that scores and perhaps hundreds of 
the poor victims were left to die a lingering 
death on the ground. A local ornithologist, 
Mr. L. H. West, indignant at this barbarity, 
induced the proprietor of the swamp to pro- 
hibit any further shooting; and Mr. West, who 
lives near by, is a dangerous individual for any 
would-be depredator to encounter. ‘The out- 
look is, therefore, very promising that they 
will suffer no more molestation. It is perfectly 
easy to understand the excitement of shooting 
a small and agile bird when on the wing, for it 
is the best evidence of skill in marksmanship. 
But there is about as much exhilaration in kill- 
ing a large heron, perching quietly in a tree, 
as there would be in going into a pasture and 
shooting down a cow. The inclination to such 
butchery, and to the wholesale destruction of 
240 
