fluctuations of the number of those game birds. During a cycle of sixty
years there recur the good year, the very good year, the record year, the
bad disease year, the recovery, the average, and the good average. The
round is said to be almost invariable. So may it be with the metallic
starling.

With the nutmeg pigeons the case is different. Here we have direct
evidence of the desolating effects of the interference of man.
Congregating in large numbers on the islands to nest, and only to nest,
these birds offer quite charming sport to men with guns. They are the
easiest of all shooting. Big and white, and given to grouping themselves
in cloudy patches on favourable trees, I have heard of a black boy, with
a rusty gun, powder, and small stones for shot, filling a flour-sack full
during an afternoon. It is, therefore, not strange that men shoot 250 in
an hour or so. The strange thing is that "men" boast of such butchery. On
the very island where this bag Of 250 was obtained a little black boy,
twelve years old, killed four pigeons with a single sweep of a long
stick. He did not boast--to his father and mother and himself the four
birds represented supper; but in the case of the sportsman it might be
asked, how many of the butchered doves went into the all-redeeming pot?

These pigeons are one of the natural features of the coast of North
Queensland, in the conservation of which the State and the Commonwealth
are concerned. It may be contended that the extermination of a species
represented by such multitudes is impossible. But while the history of
the passenger pigeon of North America is extant such argument carries no
weight.

When the birds are, so to speak, shot on their nests or sitting in their
crowded dormitories a whole season's natural increase may be discounted