ho shoot
song-birds as food; the plume-hunters and the hide-and-tusk hunters all
over the world are the guerrillas of the Army of Destruction. Let us
consider some of these grand divisions in detail.

Here is an inexorable law of Nature, to which there are no exceptions:

_No wild species of bird, mammal, reptile or fish can withstand
exploitation for commercial purposes_.

The men who pursue wild creatures for the money or other value there is
in them, never give up. They work at slaughter when other men are
enjoying life, or are asleep. If they are persistent, no species on
which they fix the Evil Eye escapes extermination at their hands.

Does anyone question this statement? If so let him turn backward and
look at the lists of dead and dying species.

THE DIVISION OF MEAT-SHOOTERS contains all men who sordidly shoot for
the frying-pan,--to save bacon and beef at the expense of the public, or
for the markets. There are a few wilderness regions so remote and so
difficult of access that the transportation of meat into them is a
matter of much difficulty and expense. There are a very few men in North
America who are justified in "living off the country," _for short
periods_. The genuine prospectors always have been counted in this
class; but all miners who are fully located, all lumbermen and
railway-builders certainly are not in the prospector's class. They are
abundantly able to maintain continuous lines of communication for the
transit of beef and mutton.

Of all the meat-shooters, the market-gunners who prey on wild fowl and
ground game birds for the big-city markets are the most deadly to wild
life. Enough geese, ducks, brant, quail, ruffed grouse, prairie
chickens, heath hens and wild pigeons have been butchered by gunners and
netters for "the market" to have stocked the whole world. No section
containing a good supply of game has escaped. In the United States the
great slaughtering-grounds have been Cape Cod; Great South Bay, New
York; Currituck Sound, North Carolina; Marsh Island, Louisiana; the
southwest corner of Louisiana; the Sunk Lands of Arkansas; the lake
regions of Minnesota; the prairies of the whole middle West; Great Salt
Lake; the Klamath Lake region (Oregon) and southern California.

[Illustration: A MARKET GUNNER AT WORK ON MARSH ISLAND
Killing Mallards for the New Orleans Market. The Purchase of This Island by
Mrs. Russell Sage has now Converted it Into a Bird Sanctuary]

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