350 REPORT UNITED STATES ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



enough to hit it. The man who shoots the most on the wing within a certain distance 

 is declared the victor in this noble amusement ! No language can express the brutal- 

 izing influence of such exhibitions. They tend to harden and deaden the keenest sen- 

 sibilities, and the men who pass through such experiences, and those who witness them, 

 without moral deterioration, must possess more than ordinary original endowments of 

 character. They too often train the young who witness such sports to look on acts of 

 barbarity without a qualm, and the men who indulge in such practices can rarely exer- 

 cise conscientious scruples against the killing of any kind of birds. In fact, they see 

 no harm in it, and are amazed that any one else should. The faculty to feel and to see 

 such wrongs, if it ever existed, is, by such practices, slowly but surely eliminated. 

 And when such shooting- matches occur, as they often do, at our county and State fairs, 

 they are supposed to have legal and moral sanction, or at least justification of some 

 sort, and are of course more wide-spread in their influence for evil. When I asked 

 some boys who were watching the pigeon-shooting at the last State fair at Lincoln, 

 Nebr., what they thought of it, they replied that they did not know before that it was 

 wrong to shoot birds. It is true that generally the moral sense of the public revolts 

 at such exhibitions, and that they are tolerated hecause of the mistaken notion that 

 the managers of fairs must pander to all kinds of tastes in order to make such shows 

 profitable. But the very tolerance of such brutal exhibitions is evidence of a lack of 

 the highest moral standards, or else they would be no more endured than open gam- 

 bling or stealing. The time has certainly come for the higher civilization to eliminate 

 this vestige of barbarism from our institutions. It is always best to do right, and to 

 do right here would be a great step toward securing universal love and protection for 

 our wild birds. 



It is remarkable that in this last quarter of the nineteenth century there should bo 

 such large numbers in the most enlightened countries in whom the savage spirit sur- 

 vives. For shooting wild birds, often maiming and crippling them, inflicting on them 

 the acutest torture, is no less cruel and brutal than the cock-fighting of Spain and the 

 bull and other animal contests of imperial Rome. In many respects it is much moro 

 cruel. Birds have a very highly organized nervous system, and must be keenly sus- 

 ceptible to pain. Almost everything that they do indicates this. Their quick move'- 

 ments, their marvelous aerial evolutions, their attachments, their maternal instincts, 

 their evident enjoyment of the beautiful, and the wonderful powers of song that many 

 possess, all attest their high physical organization and prove the greatness of the cru- 

 elty that would ruthlessly deprive them of life. The surprise is greater when we reflect 

 that some men of education, and in other respects of high character, indulge in the so- 

 called sport of shooting innocent birds. It may be sport, but is it not the sport of a 

 barbarian and the enjoyment of a savage ? No doubt future ages will look on the 

 wanton killing of birds in this period with the same surprise and disgust that we feel 

 in reading the stories of the animal contests in the Roman arena. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



EEMEDIES, AND DEVICES FOR DESTRUCTION. 



In this chapter we shall treat of the available means to be employed 

 either for the destruction of the Rocky Mountain locust in one state or 

 another, or for preventing its injuries. The instructions of the former 

 character will apply more especially to what we have termed the Tem- 

 porary region, or that more fertile country subject to occasional visita- 

 tion, but in which the insect is not indigenous; the suggestions of the 

 latter to what we have called the Permanent region. 



