The Boy Scouts in a Trapper's Camp

Book excerpt: Excerpt: ...Allowing three birds to each square yard there must have been more than two billion birds in that one flock. In 1869 one town in Michigan shipped to market in forty days almost twelve million birds. They were so plentiful that they sold as low as twelve cents a dozen and netters made money at that. When the first efforts to protect them were made they were fruitless because people said that the numbers were so great that it would be impossible ever to reduce them to a serious extent. And to-day there is not one living. It doesn't seem possible, but it is a cold, hard fact. And man alone is to blame. "The same thing is happening right now with a lot of animals and birds. Just as sure as that fire is burning fifty years will see a lot off them extinct unless they are better protected. The hunters of the pigeon didn't believe it any more than you believe it about the rats. On the level, Alec, do you think it a square deal to take a rat in the only place he's got to stay in the winter?" "Oh, I'm not taking them that way," Alec protested with some haste. "I believe in respecting the law, even if it is a fool law." "But is it a fool law? I don't think so," said Walter quietly. "In a boxing match it is a foul to hit a man when he's down." "'Tisn't in a lumberman's fight," Alec broke in. "If a man's down so much the better. Then you've got him. That's the thing to do