298 THE SLAUGHTER OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS 



for short periods. The genuine prospectors always have been 

 counted in this class; but all miners who are fully located, all 

 lumbermen and railway-builders, certainly are not in the 

 prospector's class. They are abundantly able to maintain 

 continuous lines of communication for the transit of beef and 

 mutton. 



Of all the meat-shooters, the market-gunners who prey on 

 wild fowl and ground game birds for the big-city markets are 

 the most deadly to wild life. Enough geese, ducks, brant, 

 quail, ruffed grouse, prairie chickens, heath hens and wild 

 pigeons have been butchered by gunners and netters for "the 

 market" to have stocked the whole world. No section con- 

 taining a good supply of game has escaped. In the United 

 States the great slaughtering-grounds have been Cape Cod; 

 Great South Bay, New York; Currituck Sound, North Caro- 

 lina; Marsh Island, Louisiana; the southwest corner of Louisi- 

 ana; the Sunk Lands of Arkansas; the lake regions of Minne- 

 sota; the prairies of the whole Middle West; Great Salt Lake; 

 the Klamath Lake region (Oregon) and southern California. 



The output of this systematic bird-slaughter has supplied 

 the greedy game markets of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, 

 Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, 

 Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. The 

 history of this industry, its methods, its carnage, its profits 

 and its losses would make a volume, but we cannot enter upon 

 it here. Beyond reasonable doubt, this awful traffic in dead 

 game is responsible for at least three-fourths of the slaughter 

 that has reduced our game birds to a mere remnant of their 

 former abundance. There is no influence so deadly to wild 



