s,
these are the most illy fitted to survive. They are very conspicuous,
very unwary, easy to find if alive, and easy to shoot. Never in my life
have any shore birds except woodcock and snipe appealed to me as real
game. They are too easy to kill, too trivial when killed, and some of
them are too rank and fishy on the plate. As game for men I place them
on a level with barnyard ducks or orchard turkeys. I would as soon be
caught stealing a sheep as to be seen trying to shoot fishy yellow legs
or little joke sandpipers for the purpose of feeding upon them. And yet,
thousands of full-grown men, some of them six feet high, grow indignant
and turn red in the face at the mention of a law to give all the
shore-birds of New York a five-year close season.

But for all that, gentlemen of the gun, there are exactly two
alternatives between which you shall choose:

(1) Either give the woodcock of the eastern United States just _ten
times_ the protection that it now has, or (2) bid the species a long
farewell. If you elect to slaughter old _Philohela minor_ on the altar
of Selfishness, then it will be in order for the millions of people who
do not kill birds to say whether that proposal shall be consummated or
not.

Read if you please Mr. W.A. McAtee's convincing pamphlet (Biological
Survey, No. 79), on "Our Vanishing Shore Birds," reproduced in full in
Chapter XXIII. He says: "Throughout the eastern United States, shore
birds are fast vanishing. Many of them have been so reduced that
_extermination seems imminent_. So averse to shore birds are present
conditions [of slaughter] that the wonder is that any escape. All the
shore birds of the United States are in great need of better
protection.... Shore birds have been hunted until only a remnant of
their once vast numbers are left. Their limited powers of reproduction,
coupled with the natural vicissitudes of the breeding period, make their
increase slow, and peculiarly expose them to danger of extermination. So
great is their economic value that their retention in the game list and
their destruction by sportsmen is a serious loss to agriculture."

And yet, here in New York state there are many men who think they
"know," who indignantly scoff at the idea that our shore birds need a
five-year close season to help save them from annihilation. The writer's
appeal for this at a recent convention of the New York State Fish, Game
and Forest League fell upon deaf ears, and was not even