How then, it may be asked, have our cities been able to go on for the last decade and a half, many of them making annual expenditures so large as to require taxes ranging from $20.00 to $35.00 per capita and, in addition to these taxes, the raising of other large sums by the issue of municipal bonds? The problem is of easy solution.

From 1862 down to a very recent period there was a steady inflation in the market value of all property, and especially of real estate in the cities. This inflation was due to derangement of the currency and the false theories of finance upon which the country has been acting, rather than to any legitimate and healthy increase of business. So long as the steady advance in the valuation of their property was maintained, the people took little note of the amount of taxes, for the almost universal test which they applied was the "rate per thousand dollars," and this did not materially change. The official valuation of property usually kept pace with the growth of municipal expenditure, and so the tax rate per thousand was kept down nearly to the original standard. While capitalists and savings institutions were only too glad to furnish the needed funds in exchange for additional mortgages, the payment of these increased taxes was easy. All this is changing now. Inflation ceased with the commercial panic of September, 1873. Three years of heroic but vain struggle to hold to high prices then followed. Contraction is now fairly under way. Henceforth the local taxes, when paid, must be paid out of the current net earnings or the accumulation of the people, and it will be found that the same legitimate tax per capita, which obtained before the war, is quite as heavy a burden as the people are able to bear. In reasoning upon this disagreeable subject of high taxes and the possibility of continuing to meet them, some people find great satisfaction in the fact that these large tax bills have been actually levied and generally collected during the past ten years. They argue that the same thing may be done in the future. But the payment of these very taxes, which seemed so easy while it was being done, is obviously one of the chief sources. of present individual embarrassment. For if it be true that the accumulated savings of the average citizen do not render practicable the liquidation of a tax greater than $18.00 per capita-that is $8.00 for the legitimate tax and an excess of $10.00 as the average net earnings of the individual-then it must be perfectly evident

that payment of any larger sum per annum, for the last few years, has had the effect to impoverish the average citizen by the full amount of such excess. In this connection the remark is ventured that, whenever a municipal corporation expends annually more than $18.00 per capita in its domestic affairs, it will matter little so far as the real result is concerned whether the full expense be met by a direct tax, or a tax of $18.00 per capita be levied for a part and the balance be settled by borrowing upon city bonds. The first process brings the necessary debt squarely upon the shoulders of individuals and rapidly exhausts their surplus, while the other process has only the questionable advantage of postponing the day when it must become apparent to all how impossible it is for the municipality to expend, for any considerable time, a greater sum than the current net earnings of all its members.

Are any practical benefits likely to result from the exposure of municipal extravagance? In other words, is it possible to arouse the attention of the people and by introducing real economy in current expenses to save some of the cities from the impending financial dishonor of their obligations? On this point we should hope for the best, but have reason to fear the worst. The difficulty is to make the people realize how unjustifiable is the present scale of exThe best pense, and how certainly it tends to financial disaster. men in every community are giving too little thought to this great subject. It may be too late to save the financial honor of some of the larger cities of the country, but in many of the smaller cities, where the situation already seems desperate, it would yet be possible for three or four earnest and fearless men, acting in concert, to bring about the needed reforms in season to avert the danger. Will they do it? The task is an ungracious one and the chances are against its being undertaken.

In closing this paper we may be permitted to express the hope that its subject matter will in the early future have earnest attention, for there can be no question as to its overshadowing importance. In its treatment we have aimed to present reliable data from which to form conclusions, rather than to surprise by any seemingly rash predictions of our own. The tables of statistics have been prepared with much labor and with every precaution to secure accuracy. Those who are accustomed to read figures will find them replete with valuable information; to those who are given to prophesying

they are pregnant with suggestion; and the political economist will be mortified to see how completely the fundamental principles of his science have been disregarded.

ON THE DECREASE OF BIRDS IN THE UNITED STATES.

IN

N the accounts the early settlers of the United States have left us of their experiences, they often refer to the scarcity of the smaller birds in the undisturbed forests, and note the fact that no sooner is a clearing made, a house erected, and the ground broken for agriculture, than many kinds of the smaller birds, before scarcely observed, gather about and take up their residences in the immediate vicinity of the new settlement. A few species that are rarely seen so long as the country remains in its primitive condition, forsake their wilder haunts with man's appearance on the scene, and become his associates. Notably is this the case with the robin, the blue-bird, the house-wren, and several kinds of sparrows and swallows, while others resort to the fields in large numbers with the first attempts at their cultivation. Doubtless the species in question do not thus actually increase suddenly in abundance, but simply leave their former resorts for surroundings they at once recognize as more congenial to them. Many species, however, possessing in other respects quite similar habits, seem to ever look upon man with distrust, and immediately retire from his presence. Hence the settlement of a region previously unoccupied by civilized man, rapidly entails a general revolution in the haunts of many of the species as well as in their relative abundance. While many of the smaller birds take up their abode within the precincts of civilization, the larger soon find in man an enemy whose presence they quickly learn to shun. Many of the larger species are eagerly pursued by him for food, often to such an extent as to materially reduce their number. At first easily approached, they soon lose their confidence in him as a harmless invader of their haunts, and through bitter experience learn his true character. Other species whose natural resorts are the deep forests, are soon forced to seek new homes,

through the necessary removal of the forests to make way for agriculture. Other species prove obnoxious from their frequent inroads upon the fruits of the husbandman's industry, and hence become forever proscribed races. Through these and other very natural causes, great changes have resulted in the relative abundance of the different species of birds within the settled portions of the United States since these areas came under the dominion of the white race of man. So scarce indeed have many species become, and so differently limited in their ranges, that their former abundance over districts from which some have become wholly extirpated, and over which many others have become a thousand-fold reduced in numbers, would seem hardly creditable were it not a matter of historic record.

When Europeans first visited what is now the United States, they found all the bays and inlets of the Atlantic Coast, and all the rivers and lakes of the interior, literally swarming with water-fowl, their countless numbers at times "darkening the air," while the noise of their wings resounded like the "rumbling of distant thunder." While few of the species have become totally extinct, none are nearly so numerous as formerly. From Florida to Maine, the early settlers had no trouble in shooting as many of these birds as they wished, almost from their very doors, where now the sportsman may range the country for many a weary mile without even a view of the coveted game. The representatives of this large class of game-birds occur in any tolerable degree of abundance at only a few distant points, and when found they are obtainable by only the utmost vigilance and caution. The terrestrial game-birds have also similarly decreased, some of the more important species having become wholly exterminated throughout vast areas. The rapacious species, so numerous once as to be an absolute annoyance, are now so scarce as to be looked upon as trophies when captured by the youthful sportsman, and as rare acquisitions when obtained by the ornithological collector. This has resulted in part through the persecution to which they have been so long subjected, a premium having been at times set by law upon their heads; and in part from the deforestation of so large a portion of the older States. The removal of the forests has also doubtless greatly diminished the numbers of all of the strictly forest species, but in none is it more noteworthy than among the different species of woodpeckers, amounting in a few instances to partial ex

tirpation. A few of the smaller occupants of the more open country have also suffered a notable diminution in numbers, particularly observable among the black-birds and the crows, their extirpation having been fostered by the payment of premiums by the local governments for their destruction. Many other species, wholly unobnoxious, have been greatly affected by the settlement of the country and its subjugation to agriculture, while some have simply fallen a prey to the ruthless spirit of destruction that kills simply for the pleasure of taking life. To refer to the destruction of our birds more in detail is to expose, in many cases, reprehensible acts of cruelty which offer often few or no ameliorating features.

When Massachusetts was first settled, Cape Cod was still, in all probability, the abode of the great flightless auk (Alca impennis), as was the more northerly coast for many years after. There are, at least, references to the existence of birds called "pengwins," by the early writers, as far south as the coast of Massachusetts. What these socalled "pengwins" were, we distinctly learn from Richard Whitbourn's account of his voyage to Newfoundland in 1618. He says: "These Penguins are as bigge as Geese, and flie not, for they have but little short wings, and they multiply so infinitely upon a certaine flat Iland, that men drive them from thence upon a boord into their Boates by hundreds at a time; as if God had made the innocencie of so poore a creature to become an admirable instrument for the sustentation of man." Their "innocencie" and man's cupidity very soon, however, effected their total extirpation south of Nova Scotia.

The turkey formerly existed throughout all of the region south of the latitude of the Great Lakes, from central New England to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, but in the wild state it now exists in numbers only in the least inhabited portions of the Alleghanies. and the South Atlantic and Gulf States. The pinnated grouse, or prairie hen (Cupidonia cupido), likewise inhabited portions of New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania as well as the western prairies; but it has not only disappeared from all of the more easterly States, but has also become considerably restricted in its range, even in the prairie States, where its extirpation, unless prevented by timely legislation, will be one of the near events of the future.

1 Purchas, Vol. IV., p. 1886.