R. W. SHUFELDT, M.D. 189 
noxious insects. That is a point for the entomologist to 
decide for us. 
What comparatively few birds are gathered in for scientific 
purposes, I am strongly of the opinion, has but very little 
influence either one way or the other upon bird increase or 
decrease. Take a city like Chicago, for example, and its ex- 
treme suburban environs ; how few, indeed, in proportion to 
her population, are there of her inhabitants who collect in 
the neighborhood birds for scientific purposes! In the 
course of a collecting season how many young scientific 
ornithologists in Chicago go out into her suburbs to collect 
birds? Not in any sufficient numbers, I warrant, to have 
any material effect upon the decrease of native birds. The 
same suggestion is applicable to other large towns and cities 
in the United States and Territories. When one comes to 
think of the millions of birds that pass over the country dur- 
ing the vernal or autumnal migrations every year, and then 
comes to compare that host with all that has been deducted 
from it during the last century, as represented by all the 
birds actually existing in scientific collections, the loss is 
hardly worthy of mention. Moreover, more than half of our 
scientific avian collectors do not collect in the suburban dis- 
tricts but go far from the habitations of men, and so their 
work cannot be said to affect the question at all. 
But there is a cause in my opinion, however, for the scarc- 
ity of our native birds in and about cities and large towns 
of this country, before which all other reasons we have men- 
tioned stand absolutely aghast. It is the wholesale destruc- 
tion carried on by the army of unscrupulous small boys in 
any particular place. I am the more convinced of this from 
my observations in and about Washington, D. C., during the 
past four years. This active destruction has been made 
possible by the numerous comparatively recent and cheap 
inventions in the way of air and spring guns, as well as cheap 
rifles of small calibre, also other fatal contrivances that will 
noiselessly throw missiles of a variety of kinds with great 
