ring the
Annual Slaughter, by E.A. McIlhenny]

No: these people were not Apache Indians, led by a Geronimo who knew no
mercy, no compassion. We imagine that they were mostly poor white trash,
of Tennessee. One small hamlet sent to market annually enough dead
robins to return $500 at _five cents per dozen_; which means _120,000
birds_!

Last winter Mr. Edward A. McIlhenny of Avery Island, La. (south of New
Iberia) informed me that every winter, during the two weeks that the
holly berries are ripe thousands of robins come to his vicinity to feed
upon them. "Then every negro man and boy who can raise a gun is after
them. About 10,000 robins are slaughtered each day while they remain.
Their dead bodies are sold in New Iberia at 10 cents each." The
accompanying illustrations taken by Mr. McIlhenny shows 195 robins on
one tree, and explains how such great slaughter is possible.

An officer of the Louisiana Audubon Society states that a conservative
estimate of the number of robins annually killed in Louisiana for food
purposes when they are usually plentiful, is a _quarter of a million_!

The food of the robin is as follows:

Insects, 40 per cent; wild fruit, 43 per cent; cultivated fruit, 8 per
cent, miscellaneous vegetable food, 5 per cent.

SPECIAL WORK OF THE SOUTHERN NEGROES.--In 1912 a female colored servant
who recently had arrived from country life in Virginia chanced to remark
to me at our country home in the middle of August: "I wish I could find
some birds' nests!"

"What for?" I asked, rather puzzled.

"Why, to get the aigs and _eat 'em!_" she responded with a bright smile
and flashing teeth.

"Do you eat the eggs of _wild_ birds?"

"Yes indeed! It's _fine_ to get a pattridge nest! From them we nearly
always git a whole dozen of aigs at once,--back where I live, in
Virginia."

"Do the colored people of Virginia make a _practice_ of hunting for the
eggs of wild birds, and eating them?"

"Yes, indeed we do. In the spring and summer, when the birds are around,
we used to get out every Sunday, and hunt all day. Some days we'd come
back with a whole bucket full of aigs; and then we'd set up half the
night, cookin' and eatin' 'em. They was _awful_ good!"

Her face fairly beamed at the memory of it.

A few days later, this story of the doings of Virginia negroes was fully
corroborated by a colored man who came from another section of that
state. Three months later, after special inquiries made at my req