158 SIDE THOUGHTS ABOUT BIRDS. 
the importation of thé European Sparrow, which has become 
an unmixed nuisance, occupying as it does densely. populated 
town and city districts, where its presence is of no imagi- 
nable utility, its bulky nests an increasing disfigurement, and 
its ceaseless chirp a perennial annoyance. 
To the preservation and increase of our native game-birds 
effort has been directed for many years, and with the rapid 
diminution of wild land and equally rapid growth of a 
market for such game, the need of more effective protection 
is yearly pressing. Certain game-birds, once everywhere 
plentiful, are by their very habits inevitably doomed to 
practical disappearance, such as the Wild Pigeon and 
perhaps the Turkey. But there is a large class of such birds 
—Woodcock, Snipe, Quail, the various species of Grouse, 
and some others—which, far from being interfered with by 
simple proximity to man, are really enabled to increase 
more rapidly by his occupation of the land, since much of 
their food is derived from wind-scattered grain, and favor- 
able cover is afforded by brushy clearings which have 
replaced former timber lands, 
Such game-birds, then, as are not disturbed by changed 
conditions incident upon removal of forests and cultivation 
of the soil, may evidently be augmented in numbers by ap- 
propriate management. Whatever legislation can effect has 
probably been already undertaken, but there remains the 
really important need of awakening intelligent appreciation 
of the importance of such laws, and of forming a public 
sentiment in which alone resides their enforcement. 
Laws prohibiting the taking of game-birds at other than 
prescribed seasons will be evaded so long as there are ready 
purchasers for them, and hundreds of barrels of Quail and 
Pinnated Grouse will continue to be shipped to cities while 
dealers are ready to profit thereby and the supply holds out. 
From what seems to the writer a reasonable point of view, 
wild game is to be regarded as a natural and to a certain 
degree limited source of food-supply, capable of being re- 
