456 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



before the information was carried to Europe by Humboldt. Under 

 the rule of the monarchs of old Peru the birds were rigorously pro- 

 tected and the guano deposits carefully guarded. Three centuries 

 later these protective measures materialized in a source of revenue to 

 the country. Generation after generation of sea birds had placed on 

 their breeding grounds deposits of guano which, in 1853, were 

 estimated by the Peruvian authorities to be worth $620,000,000. 



It is our pleasure to think of the Incas as barbarians and to look 

 upon their times as dark and rude. In our own enlightened age man 

 kills at one fell swoop over a quarter of a million sea' birds on an 

 island valuable for its guano deposits. 



VALUE OF WILD BIRD LIFE AS A FOOD SUPPLY. 



Under certain conditions wild bird life is invaluable to man as a 

 food supply. The pioneer must — at any rate, at the commencement 

 of his farming operations — live in great part on the wild products of 

 the earth. In days gone by the forerunner of civilization could con- 

 fidently rely on his gun to keep his larder constantly stocked with 

 edible birds. Now, in many parts of the world, he is confronted 

 with an alarming scarcity of this kind of food. The great straits to 

 which the pioneer of the future will be reduced on account of the 

 present-day slaughter of valuable bird life is foreshadowed by what 

 is happening to-day in Hudson Bay. Fifty years ago the number 

 of wild duck in North America was beyond computation. But man 

 could not slay this bird fast enough to glut his blood lust. Sports- 

 men, professional hunters, and agents of the millinery interest smote 

 them by the million. Such blind and wanton butchery could have 

 but one result. Ducks are now so scarce along the west coast of 

 Hudson Bay, where there are no moose, caribou are scarce, and the 

 fishing is poor, that the people living there, who had always depended 

 on the ducks they could pack away in the autumn, find it difficult 

 to get sufficient food to carry them through the winter. 



THE ^TSSTHETIC AND SENTIMENTAL VALUE OF BIRDS. 



Omitting all mention of various other material benefits which birds 

 confer on man, I will, before concluding, notice briefly their aesthetic 

 and sentimental values. 



Bird life is the part of the creation in which nature has done more 

 in the way of bestowing mental benefactions on man than in any 

 other of her works. Unconsciously received, yet bom of it, there is 

 a spiritual teaching, an uplifting influence, in the study of birds 

 which tends to make a man act more constantly from principle, which 

 tends to give a new and a more wholesome tone to his whole life. 



The companionship of birds affords a happiness as pure, perhaps, 

 and as permanently exquisite as man in his present state of being can 

 possibly enjoy. Never came purer joy into my life than when, rising 



