U.S. Department of Agriculture: Agricultural Research Service, Lincoln, Nebraska

 

Date of this Version

1928

Comments

Published by the United States Department of Agriculture in Technical Bulletin No. 61 (April 1928) 65 p.

Abstract

The early history of the introduction of foreign birds into this country is mostly clothed in darkness. The records of many attempts, if such there were, have long since been buried in back numbers of local newspapers, and if any experiment was unsuccessful it was soon forgotten. Hence, one trying to get an accurate idea of what has happened soon realizes that he is following a hopeless quest. It is much the same with the transplanting of native birds, especially game birds, which have been carried about all over the country from west to east and from east to west without much regard to the failures of still earlier attempts. Consequently the comparatively recent files of sportsmen's periodicals and the memory of men still living must be depended upon for most of this history, and such sources are often inaccurate; even the correct name of the species may be in doubt. Search through local newspapers might add to the slender stock of knowledge, but the results would be wholly disproportionate to the labor involved. In spite of this, it is thought worth while to call attention to a great number of real biological experiments that have been going on, unrecorded and almost unknown to the ornithologist, who, busy as a rule with faunal geography, has taken little interest m this phase of the science. If this bulletin merely attracts attention to a somewhat neglected field, it will have served a useful purpose.

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