264 BIRDS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO MAN. 



been put on the " retired list." Nevada is the only State 

 in which flickers are legally reckoned among game-birds. 

 Larks are so classed in less than half a dozen States. Event- 

 ually all birds of this sort, with the exception of bobolinks 

 and blackbirds in certain localities where they are noxious, 

 will be struck from the game list in practice as well as in 

 theory. 



The segregating habit of sea-birds at certain breeding places, 

 so advantageous to plume-hunters, is not less so to "eggers," 

 nor less fatal to the birds. Audubon, in his Ornithological 

 Biography, devotes a chapter to " eggers," with whom he 

 came in contact on his Labrador exploration. Their ruthless 

 invasion of the barren islands inhabited by countless murres 

 and gulls, resulting in the loss of every egg that could be dis- 

 covered, all summer long, evidently aroused the displeasure 

 of the great naturalist. 



Even down to a few years ago, when Dominion laws put 

 a stop to it, egging was continued on the islands off New 

 Brunswick and northward. The eggs were brought off by 

 boat-loads and sold for various purposes. Wherever colonies 

 of sea-birds assemble to breed along our Eastern coast, the 

 practice of turning the eggs to commercial use has been in 

 vogue. The eggs of the laughing gull {Larus atricille) are an 

 esteemed delicacy in Virginia. The gulls, terns, and herons, 

 which formerly bred in immense numbers along the coasts of 

 Florida and Texas, have been subject to the same blasting 

 influence. An article l by Mr. H. W. Elliott gives an idea of 

 the abundance of eggs and the wholesale manner in which 

 they have been gathered in the Pacific. Mr. Elliott states 

 that when he visited Walrus Island, in Behring Sea, in July, 

 1872, six men loaded a four-ton boat with murre eggs in less 

 than six hours. Concerning egging in California, Dr. T. S. 

 Palmer writes: 2 "A still more striking example of wholesale 



1 The Auk, vol. v. p. 377. 



8 Yearbook, Dept. of Agr. for 1899, p. 271. 



