they come back in a few days and gather every single egg, because they know it has been laid in the mean time and must be fresh.  When we remember how many thousands of men visit the shore, and that the resident population eggs on its own account, at least as high up as the Pilgrims, only 100 miles from Quebec, we need not be prophets to foresee the inevitable end of all bird life when subjected to such a drain.  And this is on the St. Lawrence, where there are laws and wardens and fewer fishermen.  What about the Atlantic Labrador, where there are no laws, no wardens, many more fishermen, and ruthless competitive egging between the residents and visitors?  Of course, where people must egg or starve there is nothing more to be said.  But this sort of egging is very limited, not enough to destroy the birds, and the necessity for it will become less frequent as other sources of supply become available.  It is the utterly wanton destruction that is the real trouble.

And it is just as bad with the birds as with the eggs.  A schooner captain says, “Now, boys, here’s your butcher shop:  help yourselves!” and this, remember, is in the brooding season.  Not long ago the men from a vessel in Cross harbour landed on an islet full of eiders and killed every single brooding mother.  Such men have grown up to this, and there is that amount of excuse for them.  Besides, they ate the birds, though they destroyed the broods.  Yet, as they always say, “We don’t know no law here,” it may be suspected that they do know there really is one.  These men do a partly excusable wrong.  But what about those who ought to know better?  In the summer of 1907 an American millionaire’s yacht landed a party who shot as many brooding birds on St. Mary island as they chose, and then left the bodies to rot and the broods to perish.  That was, presumably, for sport.  For the same kind of sport, motor boats cut circles round diving birds, drown them, and let the bodies float away.  The North Shore people have drowned myriads of moulting scoters in August; but they use the meat.  Bestial forms of sport are many and vile.  “C’est un plaisir superbe” was the description given by some voyageurs on exploring work, who had spent the afternoon chasing young birds about the rocks and stamping them to death.  Deer were literally hacked to pieces by construction gangs on new lines last summer.  Dynamiting a stream is quite a common trick wherever it is safe to play it.  Harbour seals are wantonly shot in deep fresh water where they cannot be recovered, much as seagulls are shot by blackguards from an ocean liner.

And the worst of it is that all this wanton destruction is not by any means confined to the ignorant or those who have been brought up to it.  The men from the American yacht must have known better.  So do those educated men from our own cities, who shoot out of season down the St. Lawrence and plead, quite falsely, that there is no game law below the Brandy Pots.  It is, of course, well understood that a