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Decrease of Birds in Mass. J. A . Allen 
In early times premiums were paid by the local governments for 
the destruction of many of these species, and not without cause. 
he early records show that such was the abundance of the Black- 
hir&i and Crows that their destruction in large numbers was abso- 
lutely necessary, in order to secure more than a small portion of the 
maize harvest. While most, or at least many, of the towns early 
encouraged the destruction of the noxious mammals and birds by 
the offer of rewards therefor, others passed enactments rendering it 
obligatory upon each householder to destroy a certain number” of 
blackbirds annually, and to bring their heads to the selectmen of 
the towns to show they had complied with the requisition, on pen- 
alty of a small fine for each blackbird lacking to complete the re- 
quired number * These means seem to have been immediate, and 
m some cases disastrous, in their results. The traveller, Kalm, 
relates that Dr. Franklin told him, in 1750, that in consequence of 
the premiums that had been paid for killing these birds in New 
England, they had become so nearly extirpated there that they 
were “ very rarely seen, and in few places only.” I„ consequence of 
tins exterminating warfare on the “ maize-thieves,” the worms that 
preyed upon the grass increased so rapidly that in the summer of 
beilt oblitd 77™ Wh ° % ° Ut ° ff the planters 
bein obliged to bring hay from Pennsylvania, and even from 
wortT*’ MaSSaChuSett8 ’ to ffieet the deficiency caused by the 
* See Alonzo Lewis’s History of Lynn, p. 186. 
* Kalm s Travels, Forster’s translation, Vol. II, p. 78. 
Bull. N.O.O, I, Sept, 1870. p, - fT/f 
