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 



