482 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



caught by means of twigs covered with bird-lime. Blue- 

 birds, orioles, thrushes, purple finches and bobolinks are 

 favorites with these trappers, who take them for export as 

 cage birds. Most of the birds do not live to reach Europe. 

 Three persons speak of a decrease of purple finches and one 



of a decrease of bobolinks from this cause. Mr. C. J. 







Maynard of Newton writes : ' ' The purple finch is fast going. 

 I have not seen over twenty this year. Cause, possibly 

 trapping." He speaks of some cases of trapping which he 

 knew of. As the purple finch seems to be holding its own 

 at a distance from the cities, the inroads made on them by 

 trappers near Boston and other cities in eastern Massachu- 

 setts may account for a local decrease there. A good trap- 

 per provided with decoy birds will soon have most of the 

 male birds in a neighborhood, and some of the females. 

 This trapping is not wholly confined to foreigners, but no 

 one else seems to use bird-nets. 



Mr. Wm. X. Prentiss, a deputy of the Massachusetts 

 Fish and Game Commission, writes from Milford, Worces- 

 ter County, that one of these people had a net,, seventy-five 

 feet long by six feet high, stretched where robins and other 

 small birds came to drink and feed, which had probably 

 "destroyed hundreds of birds," before he was arrested. 

 Italians and Greeks are the people principally complained 

 of. This shooting and trapping by foreigners is general. 

 Complaints on this score came in as follows : from Berk- 

 shire County, eight ; Hampden, six ; Hampshire, two ; 

 Franklin, two ; Worcester, fourteen ; Middlesex, twelve ; 

 Essex, nine ; Suffolk, four ; Plymouth, two ; Bristol, two ; 

 Norfolk, six ; while two report it from the State in general. 



This is the greatest danger which now threatens the 

 smaller birds of Massachusetts and several other States. 

 Mr. H. S. Hathaway of Providence, R. I., writes : " This 

 fall there have been numerous complaints of foreigners 

 shooting song birds." Complaints of this sort are coming 

 from most of the Atlantic States. In the South Atlantic 

 and Gulf States, foreigners and natives, especially negroes, 

 shoot small birds in winter for the market. Unless we pro- 

 tect them here on their breeding grounds from this Euro- 



