A fascinating look at how a commercial market for birds in the late nineteenth century set the stage for conservation and its legislation. Between the end of the Civil War and the 1920s, the United States witnessed the creation, rapid expansion, and then disappearance of a commercial market for hunted wild animals. The bulk of commercial wildlife sales in the last part of the nineteenth century were of wildfowl, who were prized not only for their eggs and meat but also for their beautiful feathers. Wild birds were brought to cities in those years to be sold as food for customers' tables, decorations for ladies' hats, treasured pets, and specimens for collectors' cabinets. Though relatively short-lived, this market in birds was broadly influential, its rise and fall coinciding with the birth of the Progressive Era conservation movement. In The Market in Birds, historian Andrea L. Smalley and wildlife biologist Henry M. Reeves illuminate this crucial chapter in American environmental history. Touching on ecology, economics, law, and culture, the authors reveal how commercial hunting set the terms for wildlife conservation and the first federal wildlife legislation at the turn of the twentieth century. Smalley and Reeves delve into the ground-level interactions among market hunters, game dealers, consumers, sportsmen, conservationists, and the wild birds they all wanted. Ultimately, they argue, wildfowl commercialization represented a revolutionary shift in wildlife use, turning what had been a mostly limited, local, and seasonal trade into an interstate industrial-capitalist enterprise. In the process, it provoked a critical public debate over the value of wildlife in a modern consumer culture. By the turn of the twentieth century, the authors reveal, it was clear that wild bird populations were declining precipitously all over North America. The looming possibility of a future without birds sparked intense debate nationwide and eventually culminated in the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Scholars, environmentalists, wildlife professionals, and anyone concerned about wildlife will find this new perspective on conservation history enlightening reading.

Relatively little first-hand is known of J acob] P ost] Giraud, Jr.'s life, other than that he lived in New York, traveled in adjoining states, had a keen interest in ornithology, was familiar with the works of earlier authorities, and sport-hunted on Long Island. He does not appear in major biographical or bibliographical references. To appreciate Giraud's work, one needs to place it into a time-frame. The Introduction to his opus is dated June 1843. Only a few significant books on American ornithology had been published by then. They included: Alexander Wilson's, 9-volume American Ornithology (1808-14)John James Audubon's 4-volume The Birds of America (1827-38) and his 5-volume Ornithological Biography (1813-39). Thomas Nuttall's A Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada, The Water Birds (1834), and The Land Birds (1840). Giraud's contribution followed these major, well-known contributions by only a few years, in Wilson's case, about three decades. Further, Giraud's Birds of Long Island must be among the very first comprehensive regional avian works. Oddly, it is relatively little known.--Henry M. Reeves.

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