No. 4.] DECREASE OF BIRDS. 521 



wood duck and teal ; and it would be wise to forbid all 

 spring and summer shooting of water-fowl. A moderate 

 amount of shooting in the fall, after the birds have bred, 

 does not reduce their average numbers perceptibly from 

 year to year ; but spring shooting tends toward extermi- 

 nation. 



When we have done what remains to be done in Massa- 

 chusetts, some influence must be brought to bear on other 

 States ; for, if the birds are shot on their way north 

 through the southern and middle States, and also in Nova 

 Scotia and Newfoundland, protection here will have only 

 partial results. The Province of Quebec protects shore 

 birds in spring in most of her territory ; but Nova Scotia 

 laws now give shore birds, except snipe, no spring protec- 

 tion. New Brunswick protects them on a large part of her 

 coast. All the New England States excepting Rhode Island 

 now prohibit the shooting of shore birds during one or 

 more of the spring months, but the laws of the different 

 States do not coincide. Massachusetts leads the New Eng- 

 land States by protecting practically all shore birds in 

 spring. New York protects them in spring and summer. 

 New Jersey protects shore birds from January 1 to May 1. 

 Maryland and Delaware give them no adequate spring pro- 

 tection. Virginia protects most of the shore birds in spring. 

 In New Hanover County, North Carolina, shore birds may 

 be shot from September 1 to April 1. In South Carolina, 

 Georgia and Florida they are practically unprotected. 



If the laws of all these States could be so amended as to 

 prevent any shooting of the shore birds from January 1 to 

 September 1, we might expect to see a resultant increase 

 among those birds which, like the black-bellied plover, 

 migrate mainly up and down the coast. Such a law, how- 

 ever, would not greatly affect such species as the Eskimo 

 curlew, the golden plover and the Bartrauiian sandpiper 

 or upland plover, which migrate north through the in- 

 terior, as the abundance of these birds is governed to a 

 considerable extent by the amount of spring killing done in 

 the Mississippi valley States. Some States in this region 

 give these species no protection in the spring. The laws 



