THE CONSERVATION OF BIRDS. 275 



supply there would be no ground for conflict between com- 

 mercial and private interests ; but the supply is already alarm- 

 ingly diminished, and we cannot doubt that traffic has been a 

 large factor in making it so. 



When this country was first settled predaceous animals 

 were troublesome. Bounties were offered for their scalps. 

 For the most part they are now extinct in the older localities. 

 A price on the heads of hawks has reduced them to absolute 

 scarcity in most parts of the East. It was put there for that 

 purpose, and there is general gratification at the success of the 

 plan. Who will contend that a price on a bird's body is likely 

 to prove any less fatal to the bird, as a species, than if it were 

 a premium on heads ? Various persons at different times have 

 advanced arguments in defence of selling game, and at the 

 same time have offered plausible advice as to how it might be 

 done without endangering the stock. It has generally turned 

 out that a personal interest lay at the bottom of such advo- 

 cacy ; it might be a share in a cold-storage plant or a private 

 game preserve that needed more freedom in management to 

 become profitable. So long as there is a money value on 

 game-birds, so long will there be a standing army of gunners 

 harrying hill and dale, marsh and shore, — a shiftless, irre- 

 sponsible company, who prefer the excitement of the hunt, 

 although coupled with precarious returns, to regular employ- 

 ment and a certain wage, — shooting without mercy, insatiate. 



Although America cannot boast of so large a variety of 

 quadrupeds as the Old World, her wild fowl are unexcelled 

 in variety, numbers, or gastronomic qualities. Persons expert 

 in handling a gun find them incomparable as a source of 

 sport. No amount of the smaller four-footed game can bring 

 to the heart of the true sportsman the satisfaction he feels 

 when he stops the headlong flight of a grouse or duck. 



Hunting has always had many devotees who have followed 

 it simply for pleasure. To be a successful hunter of wild fowl 

 one must have a taste for it, keen senses, and no mean skill. 



