254 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [P. D. 4. 



began to kill ducklings. Both birds were shot, and no more 

 ducklings were killed that year. In 1890 another pair of gulls 

 began killing young teal; sixteen were found dead. The two 

 culprits were shot, and no more young teal were killed that 

 season. Millais considers that individual gulls are as dangerous 

 to young ducks as are any of their numerous enemies; and yet 

 probably only two, or at the most four, of the large number at 

 the bog actually were doing the killing.^ Had not the game- 

 keeper been an intelligent observer, a hundred innocent gulls 

 might have been shot, and the guilty birds might have escaped, 

 to continue their nefarious work elsewhere. Millais confidently 

 advances the theory that a few individual birds do the mis- 

 chief for which perhaps the whole race is blamed. He believes 

 that the individual criminal among birds does his work stealth- 

 ily, and so is seldom observed; that his family is fed on the 

 results of his rapacity; and that the young acquire similar 

 tastes and habits, which in time may spread from family to 

 family and from one community to another. He asserts that 

 years ago the rooks of southern England were practically in- 

 nocent of stealing eggs or young birds, though their cousins 

 in the north were nest-robbers even then. , He says that now 

 there is hardly a community of rooks in the south of Eng- 

 land that does not contain individuals with the nest-robbing 

 habit. 



Care and discrimination in the control of natural enemies is 

 imperative. In destroying carnivorous creatures the gun is a 

 better weapon than trap or poison. The gunner can discrim- 

 inate. Traps and poisons destroy both friend and foe. Poisons 

 should not be used except in the dead of winter and should 

 then be concealed in hollow trees or logs, or holes in the ground, 

 or so covered that only the animals for which they are intended 

 are likely to get them. 



It is not the purpose of this paper to describe in detail 

 methods of controlling and destroying predatory creatures but 

 rather to indicate the mistakes ordinarily made in using these 

 methods, the most common of which is the indiscriminate 

 shooting and trapping of hawks and owls. In general it may 



1 Nevertheless, observers agree that the habits of bird-killing and egg-eating are qviite gen- 

 eral among certain species of gulls. 



