INTRODUCTORY OBSEKV ATIONS. 17 



has so long deterred this bird of passage frt)in visiting tlie east- 

 ern parts of Maine, is the fact that, in the British Provinces of 

 New Brunswick and IVova Scotia, much farther to the nortli- 

 ward and eastward, and in the old cultivated French country 

 below and around Quebec, the Woodcock has long been an 

 object of pursuit by the sportsman, and of attainment by the 

 gourmet. 



It may, therefore, be assumed at once, that the spread of agri- 

 culture and civilization, in themselves, has no injurious operation, 

 but rather the reverse, on any kind of winged game; and that, 

 in some instances, the progress of one is simultaneous with the 

 increased numbers of the other. 



Even with game of the largest kind, as Deer, Bear, Hares, 

 and the like, it is not the circumscription of their limits by 

 ploughed fields, but the ruthless persecution to which they are 

 subjected, which is gradually extinguishing them, where, within 

 ten or fifteen years, they abounded. 



In the counties of Hampshire and Berkshire, in Massachusetts, 

 of Dutchess, Putnam, Rockland and Orange in New York, and of 

 Sussex, in New Jersey, there is an extent of forest land, wilder 

 and more inaccessible, and in every way more suited to harbor 

 herds of Deer, and ten times greater, than all the Deer forests in 

 the Highlands of Scotland ; in the former, you have perhaps rather 

 a greater chance of meeting an elephant, thanks to the abundance 

 of menageries, than a hart or hind — in the latter, the Red Deer 

 are more numerous now than they were two centuries ago. 



Hence it is evident, that there is no natural reason whatever, 

 much less a necessary or inevitable one, for the rapid decrease 

 and approaching extinction of all kinds of game, whether large 

 or small, throughout the United States of America. Nor is it to be 

 attributed to any other cause than the reckless and ignorant, it 

 not wanton, destruction of these animals by the rural population. 



The destruction of the Pinnated Grouse, which is total on 

 Long Island, and all but total in New Jersey and the Pennsyl- 

 vania oak-barrens, is ascribable to the brutal and wholly Avanton 

 havoc committed among them bv the charcoal-burners, who fre- 

 2^ 



