DESTRUCTION: AND PROTECTION. 
Where game birds are left to look out for themselves, 
civilized man and the conditions he brings with him 
constitute their most destructive enemy. It is not so 
much the number of birds killed by man as the changes 
which he works in the land that affect the birds and 
often make life impossible for them. Of these changes, 
the most important is the clearing up and cultivation of 
woodland—the cutting down of forests and the drain- 
ing of swamps. Most wild creatures require cover to 
afford them shelter from their enemies, while the far- 
mer wishes the ground to be free from all cover 
except that which his crops afford, and these crops are 
standing for a few months only. Without cover, the 
quail, the wild turkey, the grouse and the woodcock 
cannot exist. Wild birds depend for safety largely on 
their protective coloring, which makes it easy for them 
to escape notice in their chosen haunts, and on their 
habit of flying—on the approach of danger—to refuges 
where they may hide. But if forest and brush are cut 
away the partridge and the quail have no places in 
which to seek safety ; if the tall grass of prairie sloughs 
and ravines is mowed and the soil ploughed up, the 
prairie chicken is without place of concealment; if the 
swamp is drained and the alders, birches and spice- 
536 
