INTRODUCTION. 25 



many birds and mammals, and many were killed by fires in 

 the woods. These fires not only killed many upland game 

 birds, but they also destroyed many water-fowl as well. Wild- 

 fowl, disturbed and bewildered by the light of the burning 

 forest at night, have been seen to circle around the fire until 

 overcome by the heat and smoke, when they fell into the 

 flame. Some fell like stones from immense heights; others 

 dove down, seeming to be fascinated, like moths, by the 

 flame. ^ 



After all, however, the fires were local, and not nearly 

 so destructive as the devices invented to capture the birds. 

 Great traps were made, in which whole flocks of Turkeys or 

 Quail were caught. Nets also were used for catching the 

 smaller game birds, and the woods were full of snares in 

 which Grouse and other small game were taken. The great 

 guns used for shooting into the flocks of wild-fowl were 

 destructive. They were usually mounted upon a swivel in 

 the bow of a boat, like a small cannon, and the breech was 

 held to the shoulder to take aim. 



The diminution of game progressed faster along the coast, 

 in the river valleys and about the lake shores than elsewhere, 

 for there settlement first began; while in the unsettled interior 

 of the north and west the birds were still nearly as plentiful 

 as ever. Up to the early part of the nineteenth century the 

 great interior of the northwest beyond the Great Lakes and 

 in Canada was not only unsettled, but unexplored; there- 

 fore, notwithstanding the great decrease of the resident game 

 birds along the Atlantic coast for three centuries after the dis- 

 covery of America, the wild-fowl, shore birds and game birds 

 still bred in almost undiminished numbers in the unexplored 

 interior of the United States, British America and the lands 

 of the Arctic Sea; and they still appeared in vast numbers in 

 their migrations, sweeping in clouds over the interior, and 

 moving in great flocks up and down the Atlantic seaboard. 

 It was the unsettled wilderness, and the wilderness alone, 

 which so far had maintained the supply; but when, in the 

 latter part of the nineteenth century, railroads began to 



1 Hind, H. Y.: The Labrador Peninsula, 1863, Vol. I, p. 209. 



