No. 4.] REPORT OF STATE ORNITHOLOGIST. 213 



tlie larvie of mosquitoes which increase in our marshes as 

 these birds decrease. They should be taken from the game 

 list and shooting them never allowed. It is distressing to 

 see these little birds dragging themselves along the beach, 

 wounded and crippled by this useless, harmful and destruc- 

 tive form of shooting. It is not a wholesome spectacle for 

 our children during their summer vacations on the beaches 

 to see full-grown men shooting harmless little birds. 



Federal Protection of Migratory Birds. 



It is recognized by all who are interested in bird protec- 

 tion that federal protection of migratory birds is desirable, 

 if an arrangement can be made to secure it. No action on 

 the matter has yet been secured by Congress. New York, 

 Massachusetts and most of the other States of the Union 

 have memorialized Congress in favor of the protection of 

 migratory game birds, and the McLean bill for the protec- 

 tion of migratory birds, under fixed regulations to be made 

 by the LTnitod States Department of Agriculture, appears 

 to have some chance of passing at the present session of 

 Congress. Its fate will be decided before this report is pub- 

 lished. If it fails, the friends of the measure can reach 

 success only by continuous and persistent work year after 

 year.^ 



TuE DESTRUCTioisr OF NoRTJiERisr Insectivorous Birds in 



THE South. 

 Mr. James Henry Rice, Jr., chief game warden of South 

 Carolina and secretary of the South Carolina Audubon So- 

 ciety, wrote me on Oct. 28, 1910, as follows: — 



I have intended for some time to write yon, setting you straight. 

 In your book, "Useful Birds and tlieir Protection" (page 320), 

 you say that the bobolink inflicts a damage equal to $2,000,000 on 

 the rice crop, and would destroy the whole crop were not all the 

 hands on the plantations employed shooting and frightening the birds. 



The destructiveness of the bobolink to rice I do not question, but 

 I deny the necessity of killing them, and assert of my own knowledge 



' Since the above was written the McLean-Weeks bill, placing migratory game and 

 insectivorous birdg under federal protection, haa been inserted in the agricultural appro- 

 priation bill and has passed both Houses of Congress. 



