WOODCOCK-SHOOTING. 283 



neous — and no less impossible to command respect or 

 obedience to any law passed on the subject, by the masses. 



The fiat of wanton destruction has gone forth against 

 all the wid inhabitants of the woods, the fields, the 

 marshes, and the waters, as irrevocably as that against the 

 Red Indian. For profit, for pleasure, for mere recklessness 

 and the love of useless slaughter, the work of extermina- 

 tion is going on eastward, and westward, from the salmon 

 rivers and trout streams of New Brunswick and Nova 

 Scotia, to the prairies and plains at the foot of the Rocky 

 Mountains. 



Many years will not elapse before no species of game, 

 whether bird, beast, or fish, perhaps, no wild animal, not 

 so much even as a thrush or a blue-bird will be left to 

 enliven the field or the forest ; and then, too late, when the 

 healthful toil of the sportsman has no longer an object, 

 and the table of the luxurious epicure is deprived of its 

 choicest dainties, America will bewail its shortsightedness, 

 neither more nor less than that of the clown who slew the 

 goose with the eggs of gold. 



In the earliest and most favorable seasons, summer 

 woodcocks are at best but half grown, feeble on the wing, 

 slow in flight, easy to be knocked over by the merest 

 novice with any sort of gun and any sort of ammunition, 

 over any dog, or no dog at all. 



In late seasons, or those wherein June floods have 

 deluged the lowlands and drowned the first broods, the 

 parent birds are busy in July either actually hatching or 

 tending the second brood, so that in this case they are 

 actually slaughtered in the breeding season. 



