226 What Birds Have Done With Me 



birds are sent out with the injunction to kill only 

 English sparrows, if they belong to families in 

 that small minority who happen to know some- 

 thing of the value of bird life, otherwise without 

 any limitation as to what they shall kill, but the 

 inability of the juvenile hunter to tell birds apart 

 results in both cases, in the slaughter of all vari- 

 eties of sparrows and other small brown birds. 

 A couple of fairly-grown boys here in Biloxi shot 

 seventy-one Cedar-Waxwings, calling them, and 

 I think, honestly believing them, to be u a kind of 

 English Sparrow." Thus many a bird has suf- 

 fered death by proxy and the killing of one variety 

 leads to the indiscriminate killing of all. Boys, 

 air-guns, Sparrows, all taken together, may 

 seem of small significance and be only remotely 

 related to bird annihilation, but are certainly ante- 

 cedent causes. Why mob law for English Spar- 

 rows ? 



In the treatment of this small stranger within 

 our gates we have made an exception, if there 

 was ever any reason for charging us with being 

 Anglo-maniacs; the rule has been open hatred 

 and in the neutrality of those professing it was 

 the usual element of prejudice. 



Even State Audubon Societies have been made 

 to seemingly endorse the "sparrow-trap" man 

 and publications, carried on in the interest of 

 bird protection, have advertised a scheme to help 



