316 The PVater-fowl Family 



where on the boggy tundras that fringe the Arctic 

 Coast, about the little pools and sluggish streams, 

 where man is rare and insect life abundant, they 

 pass the short, hot Arctic summer, — others breed 

 throughout the United States, their sprightly forms 

 well known from the long reaches of sandy beach 

 to the wood-encircled lakes high in the mountains. 

 When in the middle of summer the vanguard 

 of the returning hosts arrives in Maine, a gun is 

 fired whose echoes reach to Florida, the reverbera- 

 tion never ceasing, except in hours of darkness, 

 until in late spring the survivors seek again their 

 northern homes. Gentle, naturally friendly and 

 unsuspicious, easy to decoy, flying in compact 

 flocks, and most of them compelled by the sources 

 of their food-supply to inhabit open country, there 

 are no birds classed as game whose destruction is 

 so readily obtained. The wonder is that in spite 

 of the fusillade that greets them all along our 

 coast, so many yet appear in spring and fall. But 

 this cannot last much longer. The golden plover 

 are gone; the Eskimo curlew gone; the wood- 

 cock and Wilson's snipe appear in greatly dimin- 

 ished numbers, and even the " peep " are with us 

 in but a small percentage of their former multi- 

 tudes. Unless something is done, and done 

 quickly, to protect better those that remain, 

 shore-bird shooting on the Atlantic Coast will be 

 forever a thing of the past. 



