70 
ANSERIFORMES 
up in windrows along the shores. The preliminary illness is not con- 
tagious and birds, if not too far gone, when given pure water make rapid 
recovery. 1 Another and similar disaster occasionally occurs. When, in 
a specially dry season, large slough areas dry up late in summer, we find 
thfem thronged with young ducks not yet able to fly, or with old ones in 
flightless moult. These, neither able to leave the locality nor to find food 
in it, also perish. No practical preventive has yet been proposed. Over 
a course of years many hundreds of thousands of birds have perished in 
this manner on the continent, for the condition is not peculiar to Canada. 
There is an unexpected danger to large numbers of ducks lying latent 
in some of the most attractive ducking grounds. Marshes that have been 
shot over considerably contain large amounts of spent shot scattered over 
their beds. In sifting the mud ducks swallow the pellets with most serious 
effect. Shot can be swallowed by soft-stomached animals with impunity, 
but trituated in gravel-filled gizzards poisonous lead compounds are de- 
veloped and absorbed. It has been demonstrated that four number four 
shot so ingested are fatal to a mallard, and to other species in proportion 
to their size. In the late winter of 1925 an important proportion of a 
specially protected flock of the rare and disappearing Trumpeter Swan in 
British Columbia perished from this cause. Of course the character of 
the bottom soil has much to do with this danger. In soft mud, shot rapidly 
sink below the reach of most ducks, but on hard, gravelly bottoms it may 
remain exposed for years and be a potential danger to any water-fowl that 
may feed upon the grounds. 
Recently another serious situation threatened our eastern water 
birds. Many ducks and geese that frequent the Atlantic coast are almost 
entirely dependent on the great beds of eel grass for their winter food. 
Beginning in 1931 this eel grass has been progressively disappearing 
northward, due, apparently, to some bacterial infection there seems no 
way of combating. The effect, on the geese, and brant particularly, of the 
east coast and along their migrational highway, has been most disastrous 
and unless the eel grass becomes abundant very rapidly, or some unlooked 
for compensation is developed, these birds may shortly become extirpated 
over a large section of the east. 
Economic Status. The Anseriformes form economically one of the 
most important orders of birds; not, as in the case with other birds, so 
much on account of their food habits — these being largely of negative 
influence in human affairs— as in other ways. In the early days of settle- 
ment of the country, ducks and geese furnished a most important food 
supply to the struggling inhabitants and even now the total number annually 
killed by sportsmen is an impressive addition to our food resources. Un- 
doubtedly, the greatest usefulness of these birds is as a source of healthy, 
wholesome recreation, lending attraction to the outdoors and assisting in 
the upbuilding of a strong, virile race, familiar with field life and the use 
of firearms — qualities of no mean importance to any nation in time of 
need. 
Of the great flocks of wild fowl that formerly frequented the marshes 
of the east, only a shadow remains. Those of the west, too, were fast 
becoming depleted, and to the older prairie residents the number of water- 
* Recent investigation has shown that alkali poisoning is not the sole effect of these conditions. Accompanying 
them may be a form of bacterial infestation called bolulism that is deadly in its results and highly infectious in 
character. The disease, however, does not become epidemic as long as the water is pure and clean. 
