3 86 



PRACTICAL ZOOLOGY 



Boys with shotguns, air rifles, and various destructive weapons, 

 shoot at anything that offers a fair mark. The improve- 

 ment in firearms and the reduction in their price go hand in 

 hand with the constant increase in the number of people able 

 to bear arms, the augmentation of the number of crack shots, 

 and the accession to the number of dogs trained to hunt birds. 

 Snares are still much used, even where forbidden by law. 

 Children, especially boys, destroy the nests and eggs of birds, 

 thus constituting a considerable check on bird increase. The 

 mania for collecting birds' eggs is widespread. Some boys use 

 the nests of birds for targets and their eggs for missiles in the 

 same spirit in which the same young savages murder the toads 

 about a pond. 



There are many indirect ways in which man reduces the num- 

 bers 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 manufac- 

 turing purposes 

 holds back the 

 waters of rivers, 

 so that heavy 

 rainfalls in the 

 breeding season 

 flood the nests of 

 many marsh 

 birds, destroying 

 eggs and young. 

 Thus rails, bit- 

 terns, and marsh 

 wrens are 

 drowned or driven 

 a w ay. T h o u- 

 sands 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 ob- 



Fig. 262. — Woodcock on nest. (Photo, by Hegner.) 



