66 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



legs, golden plover and black-breasted plover. The 

 unhappy six, one of them already so rare as to be 

 out of the reckoning, were literally thrown to the 

 lions of the arena, in order that the baffled rage of 

 the men who love bird slaughter might not become 

 too great for the nation at large to endure. 



Personally, I never could see the slightest sport 

 in shooting any of the shore-birds of the seashore; 

 but to the sandpiper sportsmen those foolish little 

 birds are all great game. Fancy, if you please, a 

 grown man in a fifteen- dollar hunting suit, carry- 

 ing a ten-dollar gun and a one-dollar license, shoot- 

 ing tiny sandpipers as "game," to eat as "food"! 

 It is difficult to imagine the frame of mind or the 

 code of ethics of the typical sandpiper sportsman; 

 but the class exists and persists, and it is to be 

 reckoned with. 



To one who never has paused to consider the 

 economic value of the shore-birds and this subject 

 is so very new there is much excuse for unf amiliar- 

 ity with it the value of these birds as insect 

 destroyers is positively astounding. I regret that 

 it is impossible to offer here more than a brief and 

 inadequate impression of that value. The shore- 

 bird diet includes quantities of such notorious insect 

 pests as the following: Rocky Mountain locust, and 

 other injurious grasshoppers; army- worms, cut- 

 worms, cabbage-worms, the cotton-worm, cotton- 

 boll weevil, clover-leaf weevil, clover-root curculio, 

 rice-weevil, corn bill-bugs, wireworms, corn-leaf 



