458 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



CONCLUSION. 



Birds unquestionably are one of man's most valuable possessions, 

 yet it is just the possession on which he sets the least value. 



TVherever there are birds whose plumage is suitable for millinery, 

 there will the cruel and rapacious agents of the feather dealers be 

 found engaged in orgies of wasteful destruction. Wlierever there 

 are birds that are classed as " game," there hastens the market hunter 

 to kill, kill, kill, so long as any salable thing remains to be killed. 

 Wherever there are species that have been harried by man to the 

 brink of extinction, there will be the collector also, anxious to obtain 

 the last lingering representatives of a race before his rival gets a 

 chance to do so. Wherever there are birds whose eggs are valuable, 

 there hurries the egg collector to destroy not only the embryonic life, 

 but often the mature life as well by shooting the bird that laid the 

 egg for the purpose of identification. Wlierever in the wild places 

 of the earth there are birds which are considered to be " good sport," 

 there saunters that vandal of creation, the hunter of means and 

 leisure, to expend on the most beautiful and the most harmless works 

 of nature his instinctive desire to kill. 



It is the nature of infamies, as well as of disease whose progress 

 is not checked, to daily grow worse ; and if the present-day wasteful 

 and depraved practice of denuding the world of one of its most 

 valuable natural resources is not checked, there will be wrought a 

 mischief, a universal disaster, more awful in its results than words 

 can express. 



London, 1914. 



