The Mentor 



"A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend" 

 Vol. I October 6, 1913 No. 34 



GAME BIRDS OF AMERICA 



RUFFED GROUSE CANADA GOOSE 



BOB WHITE MALLARD 



WILD TURKEY CANVASBACK 



By EDWARD H. FORBUSH, State Ornithologist of Massachusetts 



Author of " Useful Birds and Their Protection," "A 

 History of Game Birds, Wild Fowl, and Shore Birds," etc. 



NORTH AMERICA, when discovered by Columbus, probably con- 

 tained more game birds than any other continent. The great 

 falling off in the number of these birds in recent times has been 

 accentuated by the extinction of the passenger pigeon and the Eskimo 

 curlew, and the rapid disappearance of many others, among which are 

 the whooping crane and the sandhill crane, great birds that are gradually 

 being swept from the continent. The upland plover, formerly abundant 

 in every suitable grassy region east of the Rocky Mountains, is now facing 

 extinction, and its salvation is beyond hope, unless the regulations, pro- 

 tecting it at all times, recently made by the United States Department of 

 Agriculture, under the Weeks-McLean law, can be enforced. The rails 

 do not appear to have decreased in number quite so rapidly as have the 

 shore birds; but from the king rail, the finest of them all, down to the sora 

 they are much less numerous than in the early years of the last century. 



