68 



the west. In one year alone (1890) two Boston firms received 

 from Nebraska, Missouri and Texas 40 barrels closely packed 

 with these birds. 1 Similar shipments continued to arrive in the 

 large cities, with the result that during the latter part of the 

 nineteenth century or early in the twentieth, the Eskimo 

 curlew became practically extinct, and the upland plover and 

 golden plover were well on the way to extinction. 



As game birds became scarce small birds appeared in many 

 markets. In 1902, 42,059 "game birds" were seized in a cold- 

 storage house in New York City, 8,058 of which were found 

 to be snow buntings, 7,607 sandpipers and 288 bobolinks. 2 

 Mr. James Henry Rice, Jr., says that 720,000 bobolinks were 

 shipped to market in one season from Georgetown, South 

 Carolina, and countless numbers of small birds were sold in 

 other southern markets. 



Dr. P. P. Claxton of the University of Tennessee tells of a 

 robin roost near Forest Hills in that State where robins were 

 dazed by torchlight night after night and killed by hundreds.* 

 Dr. Hornaday says that one small hamlet in Tennessee sent to 

 market yearly about 120,000 dead robins. 4 During the last 

 part of the nineteenth century song birds in great numbers were 

 sold openly hi southern markets. At that time practically all 

 the game birds in the United States were menaced with extirpa- 

 tion, but during the second decade of the twentieth century 

 State laws were passed prohibiting the sale of wild game. Such 

 laws were not only enacted by most of the States, but more 

 recently a regulation forbidding sale of migratory game birds 

 was finally promulgated by the Secretary of Agriculture, under 

 the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, thus making illegal the 

 sale of all native game birds in the markets of the United 

 States, except such as under proper restrictions may be raised 

 on game farms and game preserves. The rearing of such birds 

 under such conditions may eventually restock the markets of 

 the country with game. 



The great demand for game both in this country and Europe 

 has much depleted the supply of the world's game birds. 



1 Mackay, George H.: Auk, Vol. VIII, No. 1, 1891, p. 24. 



2 Hornaday, W. T.: Our Vanishing Wild Life, 1913, p. 68. 



Pearson, T. Gilbert: Bird-Lore, Vol. XII, No. 5, September-October, 1910, p. 208. 

 Hornaday, W. T.: Our Vanishing Wild Life, 1913, p. 108. 



