30 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



nearly devastated of its tenants. The past few years have 

 shown some betterment in the shooting there, and, with care, 

 it may still improve, but the vast hordes of the past will not 

 return. Inland bodies of water, extending through the middle 

 west to the mountains, tell the same story. What sights were 

 once seen on the sloughs of Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota ! 

 Now, in many places, the numbers left, an insignificant rem- 

 nant, bear evidence of the past. After the large game had 

 been destroyed and driven off, the small game was taken up, 

 and the past twenty years have decimated the wild fowl almost 

 beyond conception. Practically unprotected, shot from their 

 first coming in the fall to the end of their stay in the spring, 

 the result has been inevitable. Many of the most famous 

 resorts are devastated, and the existing haunts exposed to 

 such incessant persecution that local extinction is threatened, 

 unless prompt measures of relief are afforded." 



Prof. Lawrence Bruner, in his Notes on Nebraska Birds 

 (1896), says that man, the greatest enemy, has so depleted 

 their ranks in many localities that they have become scarce. 



Mr. Rudolph M. Anderson, in his Birds of Iowa, tells of 

 the decrease or disappearance of many species of edible birds. 



Prof. Otto Widmann, in the Preliminary Catalog of the 

 Birds of Missouri, says that the gun is the main factor in the 

 disappearance of all the larger birds. 



Mr. Witmer Stone, in his Birds of New Jersey, says that 

 the number of gunners is vastly increased, and the number of 

 game birds vastly decreased. 



Dr. Sylvester D. Judd, in his The Grouse and Wild Turkeys 

 of the United States and their Economic Value, says that a 

 number of our game birds are now gone or are fast disappear- 

 ing from their former haunts. The Heath Hen is practically 

 extinct, and the Prairie Hen is nearly or quite gone from large 

 areas in the west where it was numerous a few years ago. 



Hearne said (1 769-72) that in the Hudson Bay country the 

 Snow Geese came in such numbers that when they alighted in 

 the marshes the ground appeared like a field covered with 

 snow. At Churchill River the people sometimes killed five or 

 six thousand, and at York Fort they have salted forty hogs- 



