144 



THE OOLOGIST 



these states without finding a single 

 one. In other counties you may find 

 one or two coveys, where a few years 

 ago you would have found thousands. 

 The farmers are paying the penalty. 

 We are all helping to pay it in the 

 way of higher prices for the farm pro- 

 duce than we would have to pay if 

 the birds were here to do their share 

 of the yeoman's work. 



It is an appaling fact, agreed to by 

 all ornithologists in the land, that at 

 least 90 per cent of the normal bird 

 life of this country has been des- 

 troyed in the past 30 years by so- 

 called civilized men and boys. 



Great scientists tell us that if all 

 insect eating birds were destroyed, 

 the whole continent would within 

 three years become absolutely un- 

 habitable beause of the myriads of 

 insects that would spring up and de- 

 vour every living thing. And we are 

 face to face with that possibility to- 

 day. Ninety per cent of the birds are 

 gone; only 10 per cent more to go, 

 and a whole army of men and boys 

 after them with guns. 



Four Great Killing Forces. 



Some of you may be wondering 'who 

 is doing all this killing. You may not 

 have seen much of it yourselves; but 

 it is going on all the same, all over 

 the land, though in some districts to 

 a greater extent than in others. There 

 are four great forces engaged in it, 

 and I will tell you about them as 

 briefly as possible. 



The first and greatest problem we 

 have to contend with in our efforts to 

 save a few of our birds is this army 

 of foreigners who come here every 

 year with exaggerated ideas of the 

 freedom they are going to enjoy when 

 they get here. 



So, thousands of them, when they 

 land here, go to the nearest gun store, 

 buy a cheap barrel shotgun that they 

 get for two or three dollars. Then 



they buy a supply of cartridges for it. 

 Then the next thing is to look for 

 work. They all have to work six 

 days in the week, but Sunday is their 

 day off, and so out of every great city 

 in the land there goes forth every 

 Sunday morning, during eight months 

 of each year when the birds are with 

 us, a whole army of these people. 

 They scour the country for miles 

 around, they kill everything that flien 

 that they can get in reach of, from a 

 humming bird to a crow, and they 

 take them all home, put them in the 

 pot, cook them up together and eat 

 them. I am not exaggerating in the 

 least. I know exactly what I am talk- 

 ing about. I am a game warden at 

 home and have been for ten years; 

 but without salary. I never get a dol- 

 lar of pay for it, and I have spent the 

 greater part of my Sundays during 

 these ten years, from April to Novem- 

 ber, hunting these bird hunters. T 

 have arrested 38 of them; have con- 

 victed 36 of them in the courts. Onr- 

 party of five that we caught within 

 the city limits of Greater New York, 

 within a mile of Bronx park, had in 

 their possession 47 of our beautiful 

 song birds that they had killed that 

 Sunday morning. Among these were 

 three robins, four meadowlarks, two 

 Baltimore orioles, three scarlet tana- 

 gers, four little bluebirds and a dozen 

 or more little warblers, the body of 

 wiiich is not larger than the end of 

 my finger. They were going to take 

 these birds all home, put them in the 

 pot and stew them up and have a 

 feast on them that Sunday night. 



They kill gulls and bitterns and 

 herons, and innocent hawks and owls, 

 and they all go into the dinner pot. 

 Exerything is game that comes their 

 way. 



PART II. 



Then the second corps in this 

 great army of destruction is our 



