Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1886-02-03
SONG BIRDS.
How 20 Stop the Wanton and Cruel De-
struction of Our Native Songsters.

! struction of Our Native Songsters.
| A garden without flowers, childhood
, without laughter, an orchard without
blossoms, q sky without color, roses
without perfume, are the analogues of
country without song and birds. And the
United States are going straight and
swift into that desert condition. Hard
as was Natures law of the strongest
and the survival of the fittest, the
thrush, the blackbird, the robin, the
meadow lark, the linnet, the oriole,
and all our feathered songsters would
have held their own against natural
conditions and balanced destruction
with increase But this beneficent
poise of hostile forces has recently been
ended, and fashion, cupidity and muir
derous sport, separately warning on
the song birds, have combined to de-
stroy them as completely as the buffalo
of the plains have been destroyed.
Within the observation of tens of
thousands of living men the bisons
were SO thick as to obstruct travel in
their seasons of migration on every
road between the Mexican and British
boundaries. Horace Greeley's wagon
was halted for hours on the Colorado
trail to let the countless animals pass.
1t was impossible to travel through the
herds at right angles to the lines of
their march. Lewis and Clarke had to
set guard at night at every camp they
made in the valley of the Upper M is
souri,, to avoid being trampled to death
by the thickly crowded animals, whose
numbers compelled them to move by
night as well as by day. Yet these
; royal beasts are gone. They have been
slaughtered for their skins by sordid
hunters hired by sordid traders. They
were killed off so suddenly as to cause
establishment.
Not quite so quickly, but just as
surely, will our song birds 90. For
see the forces that are working their
destruction. Chief among these is the
cruel fashion among women of wear
ing bonnets ornamented with the
wings or breasts of pretty birds, or the
entire skins of birds, if handsome and
not too large This fashion has led to
the organized killing of al the song
sters for both domestic and foreign
markets. The woods and orchards of
Pennsylvania and New England sup
| ply the milliners of Paris as we'll as
thelbOnnet makers of New York. A
price having been put on the dead
body of every pretty bird in the North,
their murder in season and out of sea-
son is inevitable. We can speak of
our knowledge of place in Sag Har-
bar at the eastern extremity of Long
Island, where dead birds of brilliant
| MIN oh Oh
| scale rates.
So comprehensive is the desire to
combine profit with sport, that very
| Harbor, in the lull of his business, goes
out with his gun to earn thirty, forty or
fifty cents by shooting songsters. These
collecting repositories for dead song
birds, killed for city milliners, exist
throughout the Northern States. In
all their meadows and woods men and
boys armed with shotguns sneak and
crawl to get pay for shooting music
and life out of the sweet and beautiful
creatures nature gave for the delight of
the jewellers in the country.
| The destruction of the feathered
choir by the hunt for sport grows larger
] yearly. The ownership of guns has
ceased to be rare, and has long ceased
to be one of the attributes of manhood.
Most young men and nearly all
the boys of well-tO-do parents possess
| them. There is no effective restraint
on the murderous use of these weapons.
Before nesting time, and during incu-
baton, as well as after, the uneradi-
Gated Saxon impulse to kill somethin o
that flies or runs has full vent. And,
very unfortunately, somebody has de-
vised for boys amusement weapon
more deadly among birds than a shot
gun. The pea-shooter gives no sound,
and can be carried in the vest pocket,
but SO destructive is it in the hands of
skilful child that the Legislatures of
some of the Western States were
obliged to pass laws making the sale
| of the thing misdemeanor and pun
| ishing the possession or use of it. Its
principle is the bowstring, with the
power in a three-inch loop of very
/ strong yulcanized rubber. In Bridge
hampton, Oh Long Island, is liberty
pole one hundred and ten feet high,
surmounted by a copper gilt eagle six
| feet high More than one ten-year-old
child in that village has driven small
pistol balls into the eagle with a pea
shooter which could be hidden in the
hand. Two ten-year-old lads in that
| quiet and moral hamlet confessed that
with pea-shooters they had killed dur
ing the season fifty robins and other
birds which frequent the gardens,
orchards and cemetery. Such boys ex-
list all over the United States, and war
on birds as things made to be killed.
10 avert this disaster, legislation and
social morality ought to be promptly in
voked. But the strongest influence to
save the plumaged singers from exter-
mination will be village and town soci-
cites specially formed to protect them
from molestation and slaughter.-M. 7.
| San.