July 10, 1008] 



SCIENCE 



61 



nesting'-ground on all three islands bad been 

 dug up and thrown into piles, while every 

 bird had been routed. It was perfectly evi- 

 dent that the work of extraction had been 

 carried on entirely without regai'd to the 

 preservation of the useful birds. I do not 

 mean by this that there was much wanton 

 destruction of the birds, but that practically 

 no consideration was given to the necessities 

 of these fowls for the completing of the rear- 

 ing of their young or for the mating and 

 other preparations for the next season of re- 

 production. No inducement was offered to 

 the birds to continue nesting upon the same 

 islands. A little more forethought and sys- 

 tem in the manner of working might have 

 saved many tons of guano for the season 

 which is now beginning. 



Now, this reckless mode of treating the 

 birds will be continued as long as more than 

 one contractor is licensed to work on the 

 same g'round. It is easy to picture the be- 

 ginning of the work. Two or more contract- 

 ors have concessions for certain quantities 

 of guano on the north island of the Ballestas. 

 There is on the southwest corner of the island 

 a deposit of several hundred tons of fresh 

 guano. Naturally, this place is the goal of 

 each concessionist. The first to arrive, or the 

 strongest, as the case may be, devotes eveiy 

 effort to the digging up of this area of high- 

 grade guano, since by the act of heaping it 

 in piles his claim is established, and no 

 other contractor has the right subsequently 

 to touch these piles. Of course, this area of 

 new fresh guano is the chosen hreeding- 

 ground of the birds, and so the entire floch 

 of birds, young and old, is raided uncere- 

 moniously from the land of their recent nests. 

 As just the same policy is pursued simultane- 

 ously on each of the other two islands of the 

 group, it results that within the first few 

 weehs of the open season every producing 

 bird on the BaUestas Islands is driven from 

 its nest. 



From the testimony of eye-witnesses it ap- 

 pears that a large niimber of young fowls 

 were unprepared to abandon their nests, and 

 that the enforced removal of the birds did not 

 occur without the loss of an important num- 



ber of helpless creatures. From personal ob- 

 servation I know that, even as late as the 

 middle of June, there were large numbers of 

 young birds on the south island of the Chin- 

 chas that wore still being fed from mouth to 

 mouth by the parents, and I must, therefore, 

 believe that the complete routing of the birds 

 from the Ballestas two months earlier, in 

 April, must have been very harmful. We 

 need not be too quick to blame the con- 

 tractors in this case. Driven by the force of 

 a very severe competition, they try to estab- 

 lish their claims immediately to as much as 

 possible of the best guano, and, in the heat 

 and bitterness of the competition, they grasp 

 for guano while they are blinded to the wel- 

 fare of the birds. 



If but a single concessionist is admitted 

 to an island, then a more systematic method 

 of extraction may be followed, and more con- 

 sideration be given to the needs of the birds. 

 It would be better still if only a single con- 

 cessionist were admitted to the group. Fur- 

 thermore, the government can require of the 

 concessionist that an intelligent and com- 

 petent man be put in charge of the work of 

 extraction, who shall be held responsible for 

 the fullest protection of the birds. 



I may also refer to the fact that such a 

 measure would eliminate those many and 

 unfortunate disputes between contractors 

 which, as is notorious, have been occurring 

 in recent years on these islands and which 

 reach to the point of threatened and even 

 actual personal violence. 



in. CLOSING ISLANDS FOR PERIODS OF YEARS 



The plan of working all islands simultane- 

 ously condemns itself, and a system of pro- 

 ceeding from one island to the next as soon 

 as the guano from the first is exhausted is 

 little better than the plan of working all 

 islands simultaneously. An improvement on 

 this is the plan which has been suggested sev- 

 eral times recently, of dividing the islands 

 into two groups, the islands of one group to 

 be worked one year while those of the other 

 remain closed. This, however, on considera- 

 tion, is seen to be inadequate, since the birds 

 would thus be disturbed each year as they are 



