DESTRUCTION AND PROTECTION 537 
wood that grow in it are cut down, the woodcock no 
longer has a home. 
While all these changes are going on, gunners are 
becoming more numerous. With the settling up of the 
country there is an increasing demand for the flesh of 
game, and, between the attacks of man, the de- 
struction of their old homes and the ravages of pred- 
atory birds and mammals, in many regions the game 
birds have been almost exterminated. 
Among their natural enemies are all the carnivorous 
mammals, many of the hawks and owls, and not a few 
domestic animals. In the old times, when birds were 
less pursued by man and had a range far wider than at 
present, their annual increase in numbers more than 
made up the loss from the attacks of natural enemies, 
but over much of the territory of the United States 
that time has long passed. 
In thickly settled countries, the domestic dog, self- 
hunting through the spring and summer, destroys great 
numbers of the nests and eggs of song and game birds, 
while the house cat, the pet of the kitchen or the house 
cat run wild, is very destructive. The harm done by 
the farmer’s dog in his travels through the fields is not 
generally understood. Two or three dogs from neigh- 
boring farms may start out in company and be gone all 
day—perhaps for several days—hunting. Among the 
prey that they capture may, perhaps, be a woodchuck, 
the remains of which the farmer finds later and speaks 
of with pride as having been killed by his dogs. He 
does not know that while hunting the dogs may have 
