62 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



insects in mid- air, or long remain in ignorance of 

 their food habits. In the South, the martins and 

 swallows are among the most useful and valuable 

 of all birds in the destruction of the cotton-boll 

 weevil. It is their peculiar function to catch the 

 weevils as they make long flights, when leaving the 

 cotton-fields in search of hiding-places in which to 

 winter, or more congenial spots in which to con- 

 tinue their work of devastation. 



In view of all this, does it not seem positively 

 incredible that intelligent white men in the South, 

 men who can read and write, and who popularly 

 are classed as "sportsmen," can be so stupid and 

 so wicked as to shoot purple martins as "game"! 

 And yet it is reported that throughout sections of 

 the South, the shooting of the martin is (or until 

 recently has been) a common practice. Probably 

 this is the reason why the purple martin is now so 

 rare in the North, and survives in only a few 

 localities. Over thousands of square miles of its 

 former summer home it is extinct. It is such exas- 

 perating doings as these that have driven some 

 of us into the ranks of the so-called wild-life 

 "fanatics," there to wage ceaseless warfare against 

 the abominable practices of the guerrillas of 

 destruction. 



Fortunately all species of the martins and 

 swallows are migratory, and our hope for their 

 survival is now renewed by the migratory bird law. 



The Shore-Birds. We now have reached the 



