214 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



that the birds were never killed to prevent the destruction of rice, 

 but for market, and the figure given is ridiculous. 



The greatest rice crop of South Carolina (the other Atlantic 

 States are negligible) since the war, was raised in 1880 when, ac- 

 cording to the United States Department of Agriculture, the amoimt 

 grown and han'ested was 52,077,515 pounds! Counting this, in 

 round numbers, as 900,000 bushels (rice was then worth 40 cents 

 a bushel to the farmer) this would be $360,000 worth of rice, 

 altliough they claimed it as worth above $500,000, — a long way from 

 $2,000,000 all told. Not a fourth of this is grown now. 



Bendire quotes my old crony, Capt. Miles Hazzard, as to the de- 

 structiveness of the bobolink, and Captain Hazzard gives the usual 

 picturesque description of the coast planter, to which Audubon lent 

 ear and made errors in plenty. 



At the time he wrote. Captain Hazzard had gone down before 

 a worse foe than bobolink or caterpillar, to wit, the rice-field negro, 

 whose sullen Jisllessness ruined every planter on the coast. Captain 

 Hazzard had failed and his place was owned by a New Yorker. 



Now as to the facts. The bobolinks (first flight) arrive on Wac- 

 camaw River, opposite Georgetown, on August 21, with almost 

 unfailing regularity. Small negroes fire at them with muskets, 

 charged with powder only, since, if allowed to kill the birds, the 

 negroes would stop to pick them up and thus allow the other birds 

 time to feed. 



Not a bobolink (ricebird) is killed until they are plump and 

 ready for market, when negroes go along the ii'rigation ditches at 

 night and pick them off. At first it may be necessary to thresh them 

 off with a brush (branches cut for the i3urpose), but later they are 

 caught, their necks pinched and they are dropj^ed into the boat. Next 

 morning they are taken to Georgetown where a large company has 

 them picked, sorted and shipped, getting $1 a dozen and sometimes 

 more, net. 



One year there were C0,000 dozen shipped ! The rice has passed 

 the stage where the birds can do hai'm when they are taken for mar- 

 ket. About 20,000 dozen Carolina and Virginia rail are also shipped 

 annually. The bobolink industry is falling off necessarily for want 

 of bobolinks. As one of the most biased planters remarked to me 

 the other day, they are no longer a menace, hardly more than an 

 annoyance. 



If the rice industry is ever revived in South Carolina it will be re- 

 vived along lines similar to those in Louisiana and Texas, but re- 

 \dved only after the rice-field negro has been forced to emigrate. 



If $2,000,000 is an exaggerated statement of the annual 

 loss caused by the hoholink, there seems to be good authority 

 for it. 



