398 FEATHERED GAME 
Poor Coots! They are of little value from 
any point of view, but it is sad to think of the 
rapidity with which they are each year decreas- 
ing in numbers. Ten years ago they might be 
shot almost anywhere alongshore, but now a 
fair day’s shooting is quite hard to get. It is 
safe to say that in the last ten years they have 
diminished in numbers fully fifty per cent. At 
present they are unprotected by any law and 
are harassed and slaughtered from Labrador to 
Florida. Spring and fall, it is all alike, the 
seafowl of every kind know not a moment of 
peace from the time the flocks leave the north 
until their return thither next season. 
Something should be done for them in the line 
of protection. At the very least it is not right 
to shoot them in the spring. Nothing more fa- 
vorable to the increase of bird life of all kinds 
could be accomplished than the enactment of a 
law preventing all spring shooting, for by the 
destruction of a pair of birds in the spring we 
reduce the fall crop by at least four, not includ- 
ing the original pair. 
About the only species of seafowl which are 
not decreasing with terrible rapidity are the 
eiders. These are hardly holding their own in 
