70 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



The exhibition was gratifying, not because there 

 were so many birds that a single gunner would have 

 enough birds of his gun, but because we found so 

 much seed stock for the bringing back of those 

 species. But mark you what those birds repre- 

 sented. They represented the massing together 

 during the two, three or four weeks of the annual 

 migration northward to their breeding-grounds, of 

 a very considerable portion of the stock of shore- 

 birds of our whole Atlantic coast! Those birds, as 

 we saw them, were at one of their most necessary 

 resting-places and feeding-grounds, an area 

 which in any event should forever be to them a 

 sanctuary and an inviolable refuge. 



The remaining shore-birds of North America are 

 barely sufficient in number to save the order Limi- 

 colse as a whole from extermination on this conti- 

 nent. The five-year remedy for fifty- four species 

 has been applied not soon enough to save the 

 Eskimo curlew, the golden plover, and possibly 

 others. But the regulation that went into effect 

 on October 1, under the terms of the federal migra- 

 tory bird law, is a long step in the right direction. 

 Without it, we would have gone on vainly appeal- 

 ing to the various states until all the birds of an 

 entire order of sixty would have been blotted out, 

 literally before the eyes of the friends who sought 

 to save them. 



The Upland Game-Birds. The conservation of 

 our upland game-birds, the grouse and quail, rests 



