INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 21 



The young men and boys, now-a-days, all shoot on the wing ; 

 many of them shoot extremely well ; and knowing the country, 

 and being at it all the time, the devastation they make is enor- 

 mous. 



Their game is easily disposed of by the aid of the conductors, 

 or other employes on the rail-roads, who share the spoils with the 

 killers ; and fathers, finding that the idle lad, who formerly did 

 an hour or two of work, and bird-nested or played truant quite 

 unprofitably all the rest of the day, now readily earns his 

 three or four shillings a day by loafing about the woods with a 

 gun in his hand and a cur at his heels, encourages him in this 

 thoughtless course, and looks upon him as a source both of honor 

 and profit to the family. 



In the meantime, knowing nothing, and caring less than noth- 

 ing, about the habits or seasons of the birds in question, he judges 

 naturally enough that, whenever there is a demand for the 

 birds or beasts in the New York markets, it is all right to kill 

 and sell them. 



And thanks to the selfish gormandizing of the wealthier classes 

 of that city, there is a demand always ; and the unhappy birds 

 are hunted and destroyed, year in and year out, by the very per- 

 sons whose interest it is to protect them, if it be only for the sel- 

 fish object of making the most money of their killing. 



Even now, while I write these lines — February, 1848 — owing 

 to the mildness of the winter, which has allured th*em earlier 

 than usual from their hybernacula in the swamps of the sunny 

 South, the Woodcock are here among us, preparing their nests 

 already ere the snow is off the ground. Each pair of these birds, 

 if unmolested now, will raise eight young — perhaps twelve — dur- 

 ing the season. The bird, moreover, is in no condition at this 

 time of year — his plumage is full of a species of louse, his flesh 

 is unsavory, he is thin and worthless — yet the ostentation, rather 

 than the epicureanism of the rich New Yorker demands Wood- 

 cock ; therefore, despite law, common sense, and common hu- 

 manity, the bird is butchered at all times — even now. Within ten 

 years to come, if some means widely different from any now 



