The Pigeon Butcher's Defense 103 



ing nesting time is equivalent to entire protection, and 

 you have northern Michigan overrun with a pest that 

 will destroy the farmer's seed as fast as sown, and when 

 harvest time approaches, pounce upon a wheat field 

 ready for the reaper and in an hour not leave even 

 enough for the gleaner. Their increase would be more 

 rapid, their stay longer, and in four years not only 

 would the law be repealed, but inducements to slaughter 

 would be held out to rid the State of the rapidly increas- 

 ing and destructive pests. 



The pigeon never will be exterminated so long as 

 ^^ forests large enough for their nestings and mast enough 

 for their food remain. 



In conclusion, the pigeons are as much an article of 

 commerce as wheat, corn, hogs, beeves, or sheep. It 

 is no more cruel to kill them for market by the thousand, 

 than it is to countenance the killing at the stock yards 

 in this or any other large commercial center. The paper 

 to-night shows that in six cities over four million hogs 

 have been killed since Nov. i, 1878, or two and a 

 1/ half months, a larger slaughter than, during the same 



time, of pigeons at the nestings by nearly threefold. 

 Yet this is not "sacrificing to Mammon." A farmer 

 can market his poultry dead or alive at any time of 

 the year, and the slaughter, the country over,' is larger 

 than that of pigeons, yet no one in the interest of "jus- 

 tice and humanity" interferes. 



The pigeon is migratory, it can care for itself. It 



