THE CONSERVATION OF BIRDS. 263 



annually. The tendency, as Mr. Bryant says, is steadily u to 

 increase in severity, and it has long since arrived at that stage 

 of importance which should bring it to the notice of the au- 

 thorities interested in bird protection. 1 ' 



In the South all sorts of small birds appear in the city 

 markets. In a statement concerning the destruction of small 

 birds in the vicinity of New Orleans, Professor Nehrling says : 

 " There is scarcely a hotel in New Orleans where small birds 

 do not form an item on the bill of fare. At certain seasons 

 the robin, wood-thrush, thrasher, olive-backed thrush, hermit- 

 thrush, chewink, flicker, and many of our beautiful sparrows 

 form the bulk of the victims ; but cat-birds, cardinals, and 

 almost all small birds, even swallows, can be found in the 

 markets. 1 ' x 



A few small birds have ranked as game more or less gener- 

 ally. Of these the bobolink is one. Although one of the 

 best-beloved birds in the North, where it is given all the pro- 

 tection accorded to any bird, in the Middle States it is killed 

 in enormous numbers during the autumnal migration. To 

 one familiar with the bobolink's liquid melody and parental 

 devotion such slaughter seems a sacrilege. In the rice-grow- 

 ing regions along the Carolina coast, bobolinks are veritable 

 pests and as such are destroyed. Robins are also killed in 

 the Southern States during the winter. A notorious example 

 of robin slaughter is that of a consignment of twenty-seven 

 hundred in one lot received by a Washington, D. C., dealer in 

 the spring of 1897. During their stay in the South they 

 occupy regular " roosts," where they assemble at nightfall by 

 thousands, and it is at these "roosts" that most of the 

 slaughter is accomplished. 



Flickers, meadow-larks, and blackbirds have been quite 

 generally slain the country over, especially by those unable to 

 kill anything bigger; but among true sportsmen they have 



1 See W. T. Hornaday, 2d Ann. Rept. N. Y. Zool. Soc., p. 86, 1898. 



