18 GAME BIRDS. WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



profit in Ducks on that ranch in one winter was over thirteen 

 thousand dollars, which represents two hundred and eight 

 thousand Ducks; and there are hundreds of people pursuing 

 the same business.^ We accomplish the same result in the 

 United States, but more people share in the sport and the 

 profits. 



Mr. T. Gilbert Pearson, secretary of the National Asso- 

 ciation of Audubon Societies, who visited President Diaz in 

 Mexico City during the winter of 1909-10, in the hope of 

 securing government action for the protection of game in 

 Mexico, found the armada still in operation there. Fortu- 

 nately, few if any wild-fowl that breed in New England or 

 pass through it migrate to Mexico. 



If we turn to the waders, we shall find plentiful evidence 

 regarding their former overwhelming abundance, and the won- 

 derful migrating army which once swept not only along our 

 coasts but over the interior as well. 



Frank Forester, writing about the middle of the last cen- 

 tury, said that from the Swan down to the Least Sandpiper 

 every species of aquatic bird abounded in its appropriate 

 latitude in his day. From Boston Bay to the mouth of the 

 Mississippi River some portions of the coast were then swarm- 

 ing at all times of the year with all the varieties of Curlews, 

 Sandpipers, Plover and other shore birds. Long Island, New 

 Jersey, the Chesapeake, the islands of Albemarle and Pam- 

 lico sounds, and the tepid waters of Florida, all abounded 

 with these aquatic myriads.- 



Gillmore says (1874) that there was no portion of the 

 world with which he was acquainted where these birds were 

 so largely represented both in species and numbers as in 

 North America. Along the Atlantic seaboard of the United 

 States they abounded in spring and fall, and their principal 

 breeding places, like the coasts and interior of Labrador and 

 Newfoundland, fairly swarmed with them; while the western 

 prairies at the breaking up of winter were populated with 

 such numbers as almost to cause the surface of the soil to 



1 Huntington, Dwight W.: Our Feathered Game, 1903, p. 143. 



2 Herbert, Henry William: Frank Forester's Field Sports of the United States, 1873, Vol. II, pp. 

 7.8. 



