ELLIOTT COUES. 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 &gg, besides 

 other important commodities in the feather, such aspens, 

 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 



