Protection of North American Birds. 161 



the goose that lays the golden egg' for the rail-shooting 

 season. 



" In general, .the game and quasi-game birds are killed for 

 sport rather than for gain or for their intrinsic value as food ; 

 exception, however, is to be made of the ' professional ' or 

 ' market' gunners, by whom the ranks of the water- fowl are 

 so fearfully thinned, and who often resort to any wholsesale 

 method of slaughter their ingenuity may be able to devise. 

 But the slaughter of birds in general is doubtless largely due 

 to the mere fascination of ' shooting.' Many song-birds are 

 killed ' for sport ' by the ' small boy ' and the idler, whose 

 highest ambition in life is to possess a gun, and whose ( game ' 

 may be any wild animal that can run or fly, and wears fur or 

 feathers. Some slight depredation on the small fruits of the 

 garden, or on field-crops, is ample pretext for a war of exter- 

 mination on robins, catbirds and thrashers, jays and che- 

 winks as well as blackbirds and crows, and the birds so un- 

 fortunate as to fall into the category of hawks and owls, 

 notwithstanding the fact that every one of these species is in 

 reality a friend. Yet the slaughter is winked at, if not ac- 

 tually encouraged, by those who are most injured by it ; 

 while the 'general public ' of the districts where such prac- 

 tices prevail are either too ignorant of the real harm done, 

 or too apathetic, to raise any serious protest. 



"Among the important agencies in bird-destruction is the 

 ' bad small boy' — and in the ornithological sense his name 

 is legion — of both town and country. Bird-nest robbing is 

 one of the besetting sins — one of the marks ' of natural 

 depravity ' — of the average small boy, who fails to appre- 

 ciate the cruelty of systematically robbing every nest within 

 reach, and of stoning those that are otherwise inaccessible. 

 To him the birds themselves, too, are also a fair target for a 

 stone, a sling, a catapult, or a ' pea-shooter ; ' to the latter 

 many a sparrow, a thrush or warbler falls a victim. Says a 

 recent writer on the subject of bird-destruction, ' Two ten- 

 year old lads in that quiet and moral hamlet [Bridgehamp- 

 ton, Long Island] confessed this autumn, that with pea- 

 shooters they had killed during the season fifty robins and 

 other birds which frequent the gardens, orchards and 



