AMERICAN GAME BIRDS 
Avian Fleets Which Hover Over Our Forests and Fre- 
quent the Shores of Our Streams, Lakes, and 
Seaboard Constitute a Great National Asset, 
But They Must Be Protected, Otherwise 
Extermination Threatens Many 
By HENRY W. HENSHAW 
With Illustrations from Paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes 
ROM the time of the earliest set- 
Pens of the country the wild 
game of America has proved a na- 
tional asset of extraordinary value. No- 
where in the world, except in Africa, was 
there ever greater abundance and variety 
of wild life. 
The forests of America were filled with 
game birds and animals, large and small; 
its streams, lakes, and ponds were cov- 
ered with waterfowl, and its rivers and 
shores furnished highways for myriads 
of shorebirds as they passed north and 
south. Nature would appear to have 
stocked the continent with lavish hand. 
Indeed, but for the wild game our prede- 
cessors, the Indians, would not have been 
able to maintain existence, much less to 
advance as far as they did in the arts 
that lift peoples toward the plane of civil- 
ization. 
And at first our own forebears were 
scarcely less dependent than the aborig- 
ines upon game for food. Many vears of 
toil and struggle had to pass before the 
rude husbandry of the colonists sufficed 
to free them measurably from depend- 
ence on venison and wild fowl. 
Nor will any student of American his- 
tory doubt that, but for the services of 
our pioneer hunters and trappers who 
literally hunted and trapped their way 
105 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the 
course of empire westward would have 
been halted for decades. As a conse- 
quence, the settlement of much of our 
fair land would have been long delayed, 
if, indeed, the land had not passed into 
the possession of other peoples. 
Moreover, it was in the pursuit of 
game that the hardy fronticrsmen devel- 
oped skill as marksmen and acquired 
many of the rude border accomplish- 
ments which later made them effective 
soldiers in the war for independence. 
Game existed everywhere, for the In- 
dian, though wasteful of wild life and 
knowing naught of game laws, took what 
toll he would of the game about him, and 
yet made no apparent impression on its 
quantity ; so that it passed into the hands 
of his successors, along with his lands, 
practically in its original state. 
AMERICAN WATERFOWL AND SHOREBIRDS 
And what a rich heritage it was! In 
addition to the upland game birds of the 
forests'and open glades, great numbers 
of ducks and shorebirds found on our 
western prairies and in the innumerable 
lakes and ponds the food, solitude, and 
safety necessary during the nesting pe- 
riod. More important still as a nursery 
for wild fowl and shorebirds were, and 
