XXXII INTRODUCTION. 
objects of curiosity or ornament, and for personal decoration. The birds killed for food 
are, of course, mainly the commonly so-called game-birds,— Pigeons, Grouse of various 
kinds, Ducks and Geese, and the great horde of smaller Waders, known as ‘Peeps,’ 
Snipes, Plovers, Rails, etc. The slaughter of these has been so improvident, and their 
decrease of late so marked, that they are now more or less cared for by the numerous 
game-protective associations, but are still, in the main, very inadequately guarded. In 
addition to the birds commonly recognized as game-birds, many song-birds are hunted 
for food, notably the Reed-bird, or Bobolink, the Robin, The Meadow Lark, the Black- 
bird, and the Flicker, and, in some localities, all the larger song birds. This is parti- 
cularly the case in portions of the South, where strings of small birds may be seen 
suspended in the game-stalls. In March of last year, a well-known ornithologist reports 
finding in the market at Norfolk, Va., hundreds of Woodpeckers and song birds exposed 
for sale as food, the list of species including not only Robins, Meadow Larks, and 
Blackbirds, but many kinds of Sparrows and Thrushes, and-even Warblers, Vireos, and 
Waxwings. While some of the stalls had each from three hundred to four hundred 
small birds, others would have but a dozen or two. ‘Nearly all the venders were col- 
ored people, and doubtless most of the birds were captured by the same class.’ This 
‘daily exhibition in southern markets’ indicates an immense destruction of northern- 
breeding song birds which resort to the Southern States for a winter home..... 
“In general, the game and quasi-game birds are killed for sport rather than for 
gain or for their intrinsic value as food: exception, however, is to be made of the 
‘professional’ or ‘market’ gunners, by whom the ranks of the water-fowl are so fearfully 
thinned, and who often resort to any wholesale method of slaughter their ingenuity 
may be able to devise. But the slaughter of our birds in general is doubtless largely 
due to the mere fascination of ‘shooting.’ Many song birds are killed ‘for sport’ by the 
‘small boy’ and the idler, whose highest ambition in life is to possess a gun, and whose 
‘game’ may be any wild animal that can run or fly, and wears fur or feathers. Some 
slight depredation on the small fruits of the garden, or on field-crops, is ample pretext 
for a war of extermination on Robins, Catbirds, and Thrashers, Jays and Chewinks, as 
well as Blackbirds and Crows, and the birds so unfortunate as to fall into the category 
of Hawks and Owls, notwithstanding the fact that everyone of these species is in reality 
a friend. Yet the slaughter is winked at, if not actually encouraged, by those who are 
most injured by it; while the ‘general public’ of the districts where such practices prevail 
are either too ignorant of the real harm done, or too apathetic, to raise any serious 
protest. 
“Among the important agencies in bird-destruction is the ‘bad small boy’—and in 
the ornithological sense his name is legion—of both town and country. Bird-nest rob- 
bing is one of the besetting sins—one of the marks of ‘natural depravity’—of the 
average small boy, who fails to appreciate the cruelty of systematically robbing every 
nest within reach, and of stoning those that are otherwise inaccessible. To him the 
birds themselves, too, are also a fair target for a stone, a sling, a catapult, or a 
“pea-shooter’: to the latter many a Sparrow, a Thrush, or Warbler falls a victim. 
Says a recent writer on the subject of bird-destruction, ‘Two ten-year-old lads in that 
quiet and moral hamlet (Bridgehampton, Long Island) confessed this autumn, that with 
