BIRD PROTECTION 383 



countless millions over our continent, has been swept away. 

 It is since then that the prairie chicken, once found in the east, 

 and so plentiful in Kentucky that it was considered fit food 

 for slaves and swine only, has been pushed toward the far West. 

 The wild turkey has been nearly driven out of the Atlantic 

 States by man. The white egret and the Carolina parrot have 

 almost disappeared. The bartramian sandpiper or upland 

 plover, the wood duck, and the woodcock must follow if not fully 

 protected. Man exterminates birds for money, little recking 

 that he is killing the goose that lays the golden egg. 



The greatest enemies of game birds, and, therefore, the great- 

 est factors in their extermination, are the epicures, — the 

 people who buy birds to eat. The market men merely supply 

 the existing demand. The call for game birds has been so in- 

 sistent and the price paid for them so extravagant that the 

 market men have often organized to defeat legislation for the 

 protection of game. Observing people who have frequented 

 the markets have read from the butcher's stall the story of the 

 decrease of game birds. Within thirty years, tons of passenger 

 pigeons have stood in barrels in the Boston market, and men now 

 living can remember when the eastern markets were glutted 

 with quail and prairie chickens. The war of extermination 

 waged on game birds is a blot on the history of American civil- 

 ization. It is paralleled only by the destruction of birds for 

 millinery purposes, which has some shockingly cruel aspects. 



Here again the dealers — the milliners — are not so much 

 to blame as the public, for the former cater to the wants of 

 women only as fashion dictates. Though civilized we still cling 

 to our rings, beads, and feathers, — the ornaments of the sav- 

 age. Within thirty-five years the skins of bluebirds, scarlet 

 tanagers, and Baltimore orioles have been in good demand in 

 Massachusetts for hat ornaments. 



The brutal savagery which is characteristic of this phase of 

 bird destruction has been well illustrated in the extermination 

 of the egrets of the United States (Fig. 261). Twenty-five 



