ELLIOTT COVES. 19 
Yet once again : the lowly and indelicate yet most necessary 
office of scavenger is filled in all warm climates by certain 
birds of the Vulture tribe which live mainly upon carrion. 
These are unsightly and unclean, in the nature of the duties 
with which they are charged ; but theirs is a useful life, and 
they should be respected accordingly. They abate the 
nuisance of decaying carcasses and all manner of filth, in a 
belt of warm country which reaches from the cities of our 
sunny South past the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs to the 
Parsi Towers of Silence. 
The foregoing are the good offices which birds volunteer to 
take upon themselves in our service. We have yet to con- 
sider the duty we impose upon them, as our direct tax upon 
them for our own revenue, whether of profit or pleasure. 
This is levied mainly upon birds which in domestication be- 
come poultry, and in the wild state are known as game-birds 
—a collective term which covers mainly the four orders of 
columbine, galline, limicoline, and anatine birds. The 
poultry-yard is recruited entirely from three of these groups; 
but the limicoline birds, such as Woodcock, Snipe, Plover 
and their allies, are also objects of the sportsman’s incessant 
pursuit. Now it so happens in the economy of nature, that 
all these birds, in what I have called their volunteer relations 
to man, are neutral or indifferent. They are not technically 
insectivorous, nor do they devour noxious insects to any 
considerable extent ; neither do they harm man in any marked 
manner, But their utility to him is enormous, in furnishing 
him food-products, both in the flesh and in the egg, besides 
other important commodities in the feather, such as pens, 
beds, coverlets, pillows, and various elegant articles of apparel. 
I am of the opinion that we habitually underrate these 
sources of wealth ; few of us, in fact, are sufficiently informed 
in the premises to come to reliable conclusions, though we 
eat poultry, game and eggs every day. I have seen a state- 
ment for which I cannot vouch, though it seems to me 
credible, that the total output of the poultry industry, in the 
