"The woodcock is decreasing all over its range in the East, and needs the strongest protection. Of thirty-eight Massachusetts reports, thirty-six state that "woodcock are decreasing," "rare" or "extinct," while one states that they are holding their own, and one that they are increasing slightly since the law was passed prohibiting their sale." Let not any honest American or Canadian sportsman lullaby himself into the belief that the woodcock is safe from extermination. As sure as the world, it is _going_! The fact that a little pocket here or there contains a few birds does not in the slightest degree disprove the main fact. If the sportsmen of this country desire to save the seed stock of woodcock, they must give it _everywhere_ five or ten-year close seasons, and _do it immediately_! OUR SHORE BIRDS IN GENERAL.--This group of game birds will be the first to be exterminated in North America as a _group_. Of all our birds, 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.