162 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



from them long before land was sighted. Captain John Smith, 

 when he visited the "laughing king of Accomack," stirred them 

 from their nests along the Virginia coast, and Sir Henry Hudson 

 saw the shores of New Jersey and Long Island peopled with 

 thousands of gulls and sea-swallows. 



The reduction of these beautiful creatures to a pitiful remnant, 

 has for its cause the robbing of untold thousands of their eggs 

 for food, and the worse craze for adornment which has sacrificed 

 cart-loads of breeding birds, to gratify an instinct of woman, 

 harking back to savagery. 



Birds of inland woods and fields have myriad places to choose 

 from for nesting sites, but favorable places within sight of the 

 great ocean are fewer in number, and, as a natural result, great 

 colonies of sea-birds are found nesting close together in certain 

 favorite localities, six or eight species sometimes laying their 

 eggs in close proximity. When, to the desire for a safe place 

 for their eggs, we add the strong instinct of these birds to return 

 each year to the islet or bit of beach on which they were hatched, 

 we realize that these chosen localities are to the birds something 

 as our native country is to us. These brave birds of the sea will 

 cling to the few yards of pebbles or sand, flecked with their eggs, 

 with a persistence (what matters whether we call it patriotism, 

 or love of home, or mere instinct!) which endures until perhaps 

 the last survivor of the colony perishes. Or if left undisturbed 

 and encouraged, their numbers will increase until overflow colo- 

 nies arise near by, and the shore for scores of miles to the south 

 and to the north are enlivened by the incomparable beauty and 

 grace of their form and flight. 



What a pity we cannot begin our list with mention of the flocks 

 of thousands of scarlet flamingoes which formerly built their 

 adobe mound-nests on the coral mud-flats near Cape Sable, Flor- 

 ida ! All have disappeared, and only a remnant cling to the little- 

 known outlying islets of Cuba and the Bahamas. 



The brown pelicans which glean their living from the emerald 

 waters of the whole eastern coast of Florida, focus upon a single 

 islet in Indian River. No one knows how long this colony has 

 been in existence, but, after passing through the throes of robbery 

 and slaughter, the mute appeal of the birds and the thought of the 

 irreparable loss which the extinction of these birds would mean 

 to the Florida beaches and bayous, has influenced legislation, and 

 the birds are now safe forever under the protection of the United 

 States Government. 



Passing northward, we find among the low marshes and sand- 



