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. 
