Wild Ducks

1895

The breeding places of the Chesapeake ducks are in Canada, where they are being destroyed in vast numbers by the cutting away of the forests which shelter the lakes and pools where they harbor and by the use and sale of their eggs. Thousands of these eggs are annually marketed, and by these methods, rather than by numbers actually shot, they have been greatly diminished.

This condition of things seems to be beyond remedy, since a state cannot make a treaty with a foreign power, and the general government is not likely to interfere on behalf of what is practically a Maryland industry or to provide such compensation as Canada might see fit to ask if a proposal were made to her to protect the ducks in their native habitat.

So the prospect is that 50 years will see the extermination of the finest wild fowl in the world, and one of the most prized delicacies of the table. — Lippincott's.