360 USEFUL BIRDS. 
for missiles in the same spirit in which such young savages 
murder the toads about a pond. Something is wrong with 
a system of education under which such wholesale abuses of 
useful creatures are possible. 
There are many indirect ways in which man reduces the 
numbers of birds. Marshes are drained, and the sustenance 
of marsh birds destroyed. Reservoirs are made, and the 
haunts of land birds overflowed. The building of dams for 
manufacturing purposes holds back the waters of rivers, so 
that heavy rainfalls in the breeding season flood the nests of 
many marsh birds, destroying eggsand young. Thus Rails, 
Bitterns, and Marsh Wrens are drowned or driven away. 
Thousands of birds and their nests are burned by fires in 
the woods. Swifts are sometimes suffocated in numbers by 
coal fires built in nesting time. Lighthouses and electric 
light towers are the obstacles on which many birds are 
dashed to death in their nocturnal migrations. Telegraph, 
electric light, trolley car, and telephone wires are all 
deadly ; their number is constantly increasing. Thousands 
of Woodcocks and many other birds are killed by flying 
against them. Wire fences are nearly as fatal to Grouse 
and other low-flying birds. 
Last but perhaps not least among the causes which de- 
crease the number of birds about the centers of population 
there must be enumerated the clearing up of underbrush, 
shrubbery, vines, and thickets. Many birds of the tangle 
are driven out when this cover is destroyed and replaced by 
well-kept lawns and fields. The work against the gipsy 
moth and the brown-tail moth, necessary as it is, has reduced 
the number of birds in many localities because of the clear- 
ing up and burning of undergrowth and the thinning out of 
trees, which had to be done. Where the caterpillars of 
these moths have defoliated large tracts of wooded country 
this also has decreased the birds, for it has left their nests 
exposed to the sun and to their enemies. Several corre- 
spondents have expressed the opinion that birds are killed by 
the use of arsenical insecticides, such as Paris green and arse- 
nate of lead, in spraying. Dead birds have been picked up in 
different localities soon after orchard or shade trees have been 
