INTRODUCTION 35 



finally closed in 1913. The process is now temporarily arrested, but it is very doubt- 

 ful whether any increase is more than temporary. We must look ahead to the time 

 when our population will be at least two hundred million, and our waste places prac- 

 tically eliminated outside parks and sanctuaries. It is fair to presume that the num- 

 ber of guns in the field when that time comes will be at least three times what it is at 

 present, and more likely five or six times. 



Among vanishing species we may record the Hawaiian Duck, Laysan Teal, Bra- 

 zilian and Auckland Island Mergansers, and several Australian ducks. Our own 

 Carolina Duck was placed in the vanishing class a few years ago, but now its safety 

 seems assured. Among the diving ducks of North America both the Red-head and 

 the Ruddy ought to receive careful consideration, on account of their southern 

 breeding range. That group of Ruddies that wintered on the Atlantic Coast has 

 been reduced to a small fraction of its former numbers since 1895. 



Before we consider the destruction of ducks in our own time we ought to realize 

 that wild-fowl have always been destroyed by man in large numbers. There is rea- 

 son to think that nets discovered in the lake dwellings of Switzerland — a culture 

 which existed at least as far back as 10,000 B.C. — were used to take Teals or ducks. 

 Primitive people everywhere seem to have used the net with good effect, and it is 

 probable that most of the catching was done during the season of moult, or before 

 the young could fly. In New Zealand the natives carefully guard certain lakes and 

 engage in great duck-drives in which trained dogs are used. In the season of 1867 

 seven thousand are said to have been caught in one lake in three days. Accounts of 

 the great duck-drives carried out by Indians in the Bay of Fundy appear in Audu- 

 bon's "Ornithological Biography," and similar methods were used on the coast of 

 Maine by the early settlers in taking ducks, probably mostly Scoters, as far back as 

 the late eighteenth century. This art was almost certainly learned from the Indians. 

 When Penhallow visited the Kennebec River in Maine in August, 1717, to treat with 

 the Indians, he described a great duck-hunt, during which four thousand and six 

 hundred ducks were killed without the use of guns, and afterwards sold to the Eng- 

 lish for a penny a dozen! Ducks, therefore, have always been subjected to heavy 

 toll, and have withstood persecution well on account of the large annual increase in 

 their numbers ; but primitive man did not drain marshes, introduce foreign pests, or 

 scatter oil about. 



It is interesting, also, in considering status, to give an idea of the enormous destruc- 

 tion to which ducks have been subjected in recent times, and these figures will give 

 us a clue to the millions which must once have made up, and still do in many cases, 

 the total population of a given species. In Europe, Naumann, Payne-Gallwey, and 

 others have collected records from some of the older decoys, which institutions date 

 back to 1730 in the East Friesian Islands, to the middle of the seventeenth century in 

 England, to 1582 in Holland, and apparently much earlier in Germany. More primi- 



