182 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 
song sparrows, thrushes, blue birds and orioles. Some 
mornings, in a distance of ten miles, I have seen eight 
or ten of these marauders. With no warrant and no 
assistance, one is powerless to redress the wrong. The 
legislatures should pass a law prohibiting the carrying 
of a gun on Sunday. Every person found prowling 
around the country with guns, or other murderous 
weapons, should be liable to arrest at sight, without 
' further process of law. Many students in ornithology 
are exceedingly wasteful of life, often foolishly and 
cruelly so. The rarer becomes a species the less the 
chances that any will escape. Every ambitious col- 
lector is anxious for a specimen, and is alert to obtain 
it. It matters not that the species has been often 
described, its structures and habits well known—the 
bird must pay with its life the penalty of being rare. 
Bradford Torrey, who, without gun, has become so 
familiar with New England birds, heard in the White 
Mountains the song of a thrush not supposed to belong 
to that locality. On his return to Boston he published 
the incident. It was doubted by an ambitious ornithol- 
ogist, who, with gun in hand, set out for the locality. 
He found the thrush as described, and with it five or 
six others, all of which he shot, thus annihilating the 
colony. It is almost as much as its life is worth for a 
scarlet tanager, summer red bird, or a rose-breasted 
grosbeak to show itself. A well-known taxidermist 
has killed and put up several hundred rose-breasted 
grosbeaks and indigo birds. Another ornithologist 
says “he ought to know a certain shy warbler, as he 
