f birds, and it is the
bird student, the member of the Audubon Society, (in most
instances, I regret to say, men of my own country) who are
guilty of ruthless slaughter of the shore birds for their
skins, and particularly for their eggs; all this in the
protected season.

The situation is even worse on the Bird rocks. That is a
protected area and yet is subject to fearful attacks from
the egg hunters. I do not mean the commercial "eggers," but
the member of the Audubon Society who has a collection of
birds' eggs and skins and wants duplicates in order to enter
into exchange with his colleagues. I met there on one of my
visits an American "student" who had taken 369 clutches of
eggs of each of the seven or more species of waterfowl there
breeding, thus destroying at one swoop upwards of two
thousand potential birds. It is no wonder that, with such a
hideous desecration of the rights of the birds, the
population of the Rocks is rapidly decreasing.

I believe the light-keeper is supposed to be a conservator
of the birds and to prevent such uncontrolled destruction;
but what can he do, a man who is practically exiled from the
rest of his race for the entire year, frozen in for six
months of the year? He is naturally so overjoyed at the
sight of a fellow creature from the big world outside as to
indulge him, whatever his collecting proclivities may be.
The eggs that are taken by the occasional sailor seem to me
to cut no figure at all in the actual diminution of the bird
life there. That is a slender thing compared with the
destruction caused by the bird students. It is a severe
indictment of the ornithologist that such statements as the
foregoing happen to be true.

Almost as remarkable for its number of waterfowl of the same
species is the roost on the east cliffs of Bonaventure
island. These have fortunately been rendered by Nature, thus
far, inaccessible and the bird men have not yet found a way
of getting among them. Yet, even so, there is constantly a
great deal of reckless shooting at the birds simply for the
sake of "stirring them up." This place is not protected by
law, I believe, as a special reservation, but that might
easily be brought about if the matter were placed in the
hands of some responsible citizen res