398 FEATHERED GAME 



Poor Coots! They are of little value from 

 any point of view, but it is sad to think of the 

 rapidity with which they are each year decreas- 

 ing in numbers. Ten years ago they might be 

 shot almost anywhere alongshore, but now a 

 fair day's shooting is quite hard to get. It is 

 safe to say that in the last ten years they have 

 diminished in numbers fully fifty per cent. At 

 present they are unprotected by any law and 

 are harassed and slaughtered from Labrador to 

 Florida. Spring and fall, it is all alike, the 

 seafowl of every kind know not a moment of 

 peace from the time the flocks leave the north 

 until their return thither next season. 



Something should be done for them in the line 

 of protection. At the very least it is not right 

 to shoot them in the spring. Nothing more fa- 

 vorable to the increase of bird life of all kinds 

 could be accomplished than the enactment of a 

 law preventing all spring shooting, for by the 

 destruction of a pair of birds in the spring we 

 reduce the fall crop by at least four, not includ- 

 ing the original pair. 



About the only species of seafowl which are 

 not decreasing with terrible rapidity are the 

 eiders. These are hardly holding their own in 



