2 14 '^ ^'^^ LAND. 



becomes feeble or is crippled, it falls an easy prey 

 to a prowling hawk, owl, shrike, eagle, or cat. 

 Should a bird escape all these enemies, and finally 

 lie down and die in a natural way, it would doubt- 

 less scon be found and devoured by a carrion-eating 

 fowl or quadruped, and thus its corpse would never 

 be seen by human eyes. Sad indeed it is to think 

 of the numberless ways in which birds meet " the 

 last enemy." 



Be it far from me to use caustic speech against 

 any man or set of men ; but it makes me both in- 

 dignant and sick at heart to read the bloody chroni- 

 cles of most of the so-called " collectors.'' How 

 many embryo birds they slay merely to gratify their 

 morbid craze for gathering " clutches," as they 

 suggestively call a set of eggs ! Not long ago a col- 

 lector narrated, in an ornithological journal, the 

 harrowing story of his having rifled the nest of a 

 hairy woodpecker five or six times in a single season, 

 the poor bird laying a new deposit after each bur- 

 glary, until at last she grew suspicious and sought a 

 safer site for her nest. The writer described his 

 part of the performance with apparent gusto, as if 

 he had made a splendid contribution to science ! 

 If he must have a collection of hairy woodpecker's 

 eggs, why not take a single "clutch," and then leave 

 the bird to make her second deposit and rear her 

 brood in peace? 



To my mind, many " professionals " shoot a score 

 of birds where they ought to shoot but one. The 

 long record of slaughtered birds is sickening. The 



