358 USEFUL BIRDS. 
among the sea birds along the Atlantic coasts. ‘The birds 
were shot down on their breeding grounds and their wings 
cut off. Many human lives have been lost by reason of 
this. nefarious business. In 1905 a warden employed by the 
National Association of Audubon Societies to protect the 
birds was murdered by plume hunters. The reader may be 
spared further details of this barbarous trade. 
The number of birds killed in the United States each year 
before the business was checked by law and public sentiment 
cannot be even estimated, but some figures can be given. 
A single local taxidermist handled thirty thousand bird skins 
in one year. A collector brought back eleven thousand 
skins from a three months’ trip. About seventy thousand 
bird skins were sent to New York from a small district on 
Long Island in about four months. American bird skins 
were shipped to London and Paris. We may judge of the 
demand there for birds from the fact that from one auction 
room in London there were sold in three months over four 
hundred thousand bird skins from America and over three 
hundred and fifty thousand from India. One New York 
firm had a contract to supply forty thousand skins to a 
Paris firm. 
In Massachusetts this trade bore most heavily upon the 
Gulls and Terns, which were driven out from many breeding 
places along the coast. From 1870 to 1890 this business 
was at its height in this country; and, as the market in 
Europe is still brisk, no doubt some birds are still killed 
here for millinery purposes, and some are still worn here, 
despite the laws which prohibit any one from killing native 
birds or selling or wearing their feathers. 
The danger to birds multiplies with the increase of popu- 
lation. Gunners and sportsmen shoot birds mainly to sup- 
ply the markets or for recreation; but many persons shoot 
birds, large or small, merely for sport or practice. There 
is a class of foreigners who shoot small birds for sport, 
and eat them. These people go out in squads, and each 
man shoots at every bird within range, whether sitting or 
flying. The Italians are tremendously destructive to bird 
life. In southern Europe the larger birds are now so scarce 
