APPENDIX 389 



Every one knows that our gleesome minstrel of the Northern meadows, who 

 fills the June air with bursting bubbles of tinkling melody and is called bobo- 

 link, changes his name and dress and goes South to be slain and eaten as the 

 reed-bird, and the practice is so old and appeals so strongly to man's most com" 

 manding organ that we must try to become reconciled to a flaming wickedness. 

 But we do rebel when we see our familiar friends the robins offered for sale in 

 the South, and we are ready to weep when we see wood-thrushes, divine 

 psalmists in the North, killed as legitimate quarry on the Gulf Coast, even 

 though they be shy and silent there, and, ludicrous to say, in some localities 

 known as swamp-quail — L. T. Spr ague, in Outing. ^ 



I have placed the bobolink at the end of my list, a place most con- 

 venient to strike it off, and I hope before long this handsome song-bird 

 of the meadows will not be an object of pursuit. 



I would urge the sportsmen of the Southern States to exclude the 

 robin and the meadow-lark from the game-list. I would, too, urge all 

 of the States to prohibit the shooting of the smaller shore birds which 

 are not desirable as marks or food. The larger waders, such as the 

 avocet and stilt, which have become so rare as to indicate their exter- 

 mination, might well be protected at all times. The wood-duck and 

 the woodcock should be protected for a term of years, and the open 

 season for these birds should then be a short autumn {not summer) 

 season in the South as well as in the North. 



In conclusion I would again urge the immediate establishment of 

 bird parks, where the game birds can find the safe refuge at all times 

 which they now have in the Yellowstone Park. I again urge all State 

 game officials not to devote their entire energies to the propagation of 

 fancy foreign fowls which can never survive in unprotected fields, but 

 to give their attention to the restoration of our native game birds, the 

 grouse and partridges, and to the protection of all game in the spring 

 of the year, insisting everywhere upon the passage of laws (where legis- 

 lation is needed) to stop the spring shooting, and looking well to the 

 enforcement of such laws. 



Ohio has stopped the breeding of pheasants. 



