TO

William Dutcher

FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF THE
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AUDUBON SOCIETIES, AND
LIFE-LONG CHAMPION OF AMERICAN BIRDS
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED BY
A SINCERE ADMIRER

"I drink to him, he is not here,
Yet I would guard his glory;
A knight without reproach or fear
Should live in song and story."
—Walsh.

The preservation of animal and plant life, and of the general beauty of Nature, is one of the foremost duties of the men and women of to-day. It is an imperative duty, because it must be performed at once, for otherwise it will be too late. Every possible means of preservation,—sentimental, educational and legislative,—must be employed.

The present warning issues with no uncertain sound, because this great battle for preservation and conservation cannot be won by gentle tones, nor by appeals to the aesthetic instincts of those who have no sense of beauty, or enjoyment of Nature. It is necessary to sound a loud alarm, to present the facts in very strong language, backed up by irrefutable statistics and by photographs which tell no lies, to establish the law and enforce it if needs be with a bludgeon.

This book is such an alarm call. Its forceful pages remind me of the sounding of the great bells in the watch-towers of the cities of the Middle Ages which called the citizens to arms to protect their homes, their liberties and their happiness. It is undeniable that the welfare and happiness of our own and of all future generations of Americans are at stake in this battle for the preservation of Nature against the selfishness, the ignorance, or the cruelty of her destroyers.

We no longer destroy great works of art. They are treasured, and regarded as of priceless value; but we have yet to attain the state of civilization where the destruction of a glorious work of Nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird, is regarded with equal abhorrence. The whole earth is a poorer place to live in when a colony of exquisite egrets or birds of paradise is destroyed in order that the plumes may decorate the hat of some lady of fashion, and ultimately find their way into the rubbish heap. The people of all the New England States are poorer when the ignorant whites, foreigners, or negroes of our southern states destroy the robins and other song birds of the North for a mess of pottage.

Travels through Europe, as well as over a large part of the North American continent, have convinced me that nowhere is Nature being destroyed so rapidly as in the United States. Except within our conservation areas, an earthly paradise is being turned into an earthly hades; and it is not savages nor primitive men who are doing this, but men and women who boast of their civilization. Air and water are polluted, rivers and streams serve as sewers and dumping grounds, forests are swept away and fishes are driven from the streams. Many birds are becoming extinct, and certain mammals are on the verge of [Page viii] extermination. Vulgar advertisements hide the landscape, and in all that disfigures the wonderful heritage of the beauty of Nature to-day, we Americans are in the lead.

Fortunately the tide of destruction is ebbing, and the tide of conservation is coming in. Americans are practical. Like all other northern peoples, they love money and will sacrifice much for it, but they are also full of idealism, as well as of moral and spiritual energy. The influence of the splendid body of Americans and Canadians who have turned their best forces of mind and language into literature and into political power for the conservation movement, is becoming stronger every day. Yet we are far from the point where the momentum of conservation is strong enough to arrest and roll back the tide of destruction; and this is especially true with regard to our fast vanishing animal life.

The facts and figures set forth in this volume will astonish all those lovers of Nature and friends of the animal world who are living in a false or imaginary sense of security. The logic of these facts is inexorable. As regards our birds and mammals, the failures of supposed protection in America—under a system of free shooting—are so glaring that we are confident this exposure will lead to sweeping reforms. The author of this work is no amateur in the field of wild-life protection. His ideas concerning methods of reform are drawn from long and successful experience. The states which are still behind in this movement may well give serious heed to his summons, and pass the new laws that are so urgently demanded to save the vanishing remnant.

The New York Zoological Society, which is cooperating with many other organizations in this great movement, sends forth this work in the belief that there is no one who is more ardently devoted to the great cause or rendering more effective service in it than William T. Hornaday. We believe that this is a great book, destined to exert a world-wide influence, to be translated into other languages, and to arouse the defenders and lovers of our vanishing animal life before it is too late.

The writing of this book has taught me many things. Beyond question, we are exterminating our finest species of mammals, birds and fishes according to law!

I am appalled by the mass of evidence proving that throughout the entire United States and Canada, in every state and province, the existing legal system for the preservation of wild life is fatally defective. There is not a single state in our country from which the killable game is not being rapidly and persistently shot to death, legally or illegally, very much more rapidly than it is breeding, with extermination for the most of it close in sight. This statement is not open to argument; for millions of men know that it is literally true. We are living in a fool's paradise.

The rage for wild-life slaughter is far more prevalent to-day throughout the world than it was in 1872, when the buffalo butchers paved the prairies of Texas and Colorado with festering carcasses. From one end of our continent to the other, there is a restless, resistless desire to "kill, kill!"

I have been shocked by the accumulation of evidence showing that all over our country and Canada fully nine-tenths of our protective laws have practically been dictated by the killers of the game, and that in all save a very few instances the hunters have been exceedingly careful to provide "open seasons" for slaughter, as long as any game remains to kill!

And yet, the game of North America does not belong wholly and exclusively to the men who kill! The other ninety-seven per cent of the People have vested rights in it, far exceeding those of the three per cent. Posterity has claims upon it that no honest man can ignore.

I am now going to ask both the true sportsman and the people who do not kill wild things to awake, and do their plain duty in protecting and preserving the game and other wild life which belongs partly to us, but chiefly to those who come after us. Can they be aroused, before it is too late?

The time to discuss tiresome academic theories regarding "bag limits" and different "open seasons" as being sufficient to preserve the game, has gone by! We have reached the point where the alternatives are long closed seasons or a gameless continent; and we must choose one or the other, speedily. A continent without wild life is like a forest with no leaves on the trees.

The great increase in the slaughter of song birds for food, by the negroes and poor whites of the South, has become an unbearable scourge to our migratory birds,—the very birds on which farmers north and south depend for protection from the insect hordes,—the very birds that are most near and dear to the people of the North. Song-bird slaughter is growing and spreading, with the decrease of the game birds! It is a matter that requires instant attention and stern repression. At the present moment it seems that the only remedy lies in federal protection for all migratory birds,—because so many states will not do their duty.

We are weary of witnessing the greed, selfishness and cruelty of "civilized" man toward the wild creatures of the earth. We are sick of tales of slaughter and pictures of carnage. It is time for a sweeping Reformation; and that is precisely what we now demand.

I have been a sportsman myself; but times have changed, and we must change also. When game was plentiful, I believed that it was right for men and boys to kill a limited amount of it for sport and for the table. But the old basis has been swept away by an Army of Destruction that now is almost beyond all control. We must awake, and arouse to the new situation, face it like men, and adjust our minds to the new conditions. The three million gunners of to-day must no longer expect or demand the same generous hunting privileges that were right for hunters fifty years ago, when game was fifty times as plentiful as it is now and there was only one killer for every fifty now in the field.

The fatalistic idea that bag-limit laws can save the game is to-day the curse of all our game birds, mammals and fishes! It is a fraud, a delusion and a snare. That miserable fetish has been worshipped much too long. Our game is being exterminated, everywhere, by blind insistence upon "open seasons," and solemn reliance upon "legal bag-limits." If a majority of the people of America feel that so long as there is any game alive there must be an annual two months or four months open season for its slaughter, then assuredly we soon will have a gameless continent.

The only thing that will save the game is by stopping the killing of it! In establishing and promulgating this principle, the cause of wild-life protection greatly needs three things: money, labor, and publicity. With the first, we can secure the second and third. But can we get it,—and get it in time to save?

This volume is in every sense a contribution to a Cause; and as such it ever will remain. I wish the public to receive it on that basis. So much important material has drifted straight to it from other hands that this unexpected aid seems to the author like a good omen.

The manuscript has received the benefit of a close and critical reading and correcting by my comrade on the firing-line and esteemed friend, Mr. Madison Grant, through which the text was greatly improved. But for the splendid encouragement and assistance that I have received from him and [Page xi] from Professor Henry Fairneld Osborn the work involved would have borne down rather heavily.

The four chapters embracing the "New Laws Needed; A Roll-Call of the States," were critically inspected, corrected and brought down to date by Dr. T.S. Palmer, our highest authority on the game laws of the Nation and the States. For this valuable service the author is deeply grateful. Of course the author is alone responsible for all the opinions and conclusions herein recorded, and for all errors that appear outside of quotations.

I trust that the Reader will kindly excuse and forget all the typographic and clerical errors that may have escaped me in the rush that had to be made against Time.

"By my labors my vineyard flourished. But Ahab came. Alas! for Naboth."

In order that the American people may correctly understand and judge the question of the extinction or preservation of our wild life, it is necessary to recall the near past. It is not necessary, however, to go far into the details of history; for a few quick glances at a few high points will be quite sufficient for the purpose in view.

Any man who reads the books which best tell the story of the development of the American colonies of 1712 into the American nation of 1912, and takes due note of the wild-life features of the tale, will say without hesitation that when the American people received this land from the bountiful hand of Nature, it was endowed with a magnificent and all-pervading supply of valuable wild creatures. The pioneers and the early settlers were too busy even to take due note of that fact, or to comment upon it, save in very fragmentary ways.

Nevertheless, the wild-life abundance of early American days survived down to so late a period that it touched the lives of millions of people now living. Any man 55 years of age who when a boy had a taste for "hunting,"—for at that time there were no "sportsmen" in America,—will remember the flocks and herds of wild creatures that he saw and which made upon his mind many indelible impressions.

"Abundance" is the word with which to describe the original animal life that stocked our country, and all North America, only a short half-century ago. Throughout every state, on every shore-line, in all the millions of fresh water lakes, ponds and rivers, on every mountain range, in every forest, and even on every desert, the wild flocks and herds held sway. It was impossible to go beyond the settled haunts of civilized man and escape them.

It was a full century after the complete settlement of New England and the Virginia colonies that the wonderful big-game fauna of the great plains and Rocky Mountains was really discovered; but the bison [Page 2] millions, the antelope millions, the mule deer, the mountain sheep and mountain goat were there, all the time. In the early days, the millions of pinnated grouse and quail of the central states attracted no serious attention from the American people-at-large; but they lived and flourished just the same, far down in the seventies, when the greedy market gunners systematically slaughtered them, and barreled them up for "the market," while the foolish farmers calmly permitted them to do it.

We obtain the best of our history of the former abundance of North American wild life first from the pages of Audubon and Wilson; next, from the records left by such pioneers as Lewis and Clark, and last from the testimony of living men. To all this we can, many of us, add observations of our own.

To me the most striking fact that stands forth in the story of American wild life one hundred years ago is the wide extent and thoroughness of its distribution. Wide as our country is, and marvelous as it is in the diversity of its climates, its soils, its topography, its flora, its riches and its poverty, Nature gave to each square mile and to each acre a generous quota of wild creatures, according to its ability to maintain living things. No pioneer ever pushed so far, or into regions so difficult or so remote, that he did not find awaiting him a host of birds and beasts. Sometimes the pioneer was not a good hunter; usually he was a stupid fisherman; but the "game" was there, nevertheless. The time was when every farm had its quota.

The part that the wild life of America played in the settlement and development of this continent was so far-reaching in extent, and so enormous in potential value, that it fairly staggers the imagination. From the landing of the Pilgrims down to the present hour the wild game has been the mainstay and the resource against starvation of the pathfinder, the settler, the prospector, and at times even the railroad-builder. In view of what the bison millions did for the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas and Texas, it is only right and square that those states should now do something for the perpetual preservation of the bison species and all other big game that needs help.

For years and years, the antelope millions of the Montana and Wyoming grass-lands fed the scout and Indian-fighter, freighter, cowboy and surveyor, ranchman and sheep-herder; but thus far I have yet to hear of one Western state that has ever spent one penny directly for the preservation of the antelope! And to-day we are in a hand-to-hand fight in Congress, and in Montana, with the Wool-Growers Association, which maintains in Washington a keen lobbyist to keep aloft the tariff on wool, and prevent Congress from taking 15 square miles of grass lands on Snow Creek, Montana, for a National Antelope Preserve. All that the wool-growers want is the entire earth, all to themselves. Mr. McClure, the Secretary of the Association says:

"The proper place in which to preserve the big game of the West is in city parks, where it can be protected."

To the colonist of the East and pioneer of the West, the white-tailed deer was an ever present help in time of trouble. Without this omnipresent animal, and the supply of good meat that each white flag represented, the commissariat difficulties of the settlers who won the country as far westward as Indiana would have been many times greater than they were. The backwoods Pilgrim's progress was like this:

Trail, deer; cabin, deer; clearing; bear, corn, deer; hogs, deer; cattle, wheat, independence.

And yet, how many men are there to-day, out of our ninety millions of Americans and pseudo-Americans, who remember with any feeling of gratitude the part played in American history by the white-tailed deer? Very few! How many Americans are there in our land who now preserve that deer for sentimental reasons, and because his forbears were nation-builders? As a matter of fact, are there any?

On every eastern pioneer's monument, the white-tailed deer should figure; and on those of the Great West, the bison and the antelope should be cast in enduring bronze, "lest we forget!"

The game birds of America played a different part from that of the deer, antelope and bison. In the early days, shotguns were few, and shot was scarce and dear. The wild turkey and goose were the smallest birds on which a rifleman could afford to expend a bullet and a whole charge of powder. It was for this reason that the deer, bear, bison, and elk disappeared from the eastern United States while the game birds yet remained abundant. With the disappearance of the big game came the fat steer, hog and hominy, the wheat-field, fruit orchard and poultry galore.

The game birds of America, as a class and a mass, have not been swept away to ward off starvation or to rescue the perishing. Even back in the sixties and seventies, very, very few men of the North thought of killing prairie chickens, ducks and quail, snipe and woodcock, in order to keep the hunger wolf from the door. The process was too slow and uncertain; and besides, the really-poor man rarely had the gun and ammunition. Instead of attempting to live on birds, he hustled for the staple food products that the soil of his own farm could produce.

First, last and nearly all the time, the game birds of the United States as a whole, have been sacrificed on the altar of Rank Luxury, to tempt appetites that were tired of fried chicken and other farm delicacies. To-day, even the average poor man hunts birds for the joy of the outing, and the pampered epicures of the hotels and restaurants buy game birds, and eat small portions of them, solely to tempt jaded appetites. If there is such a thing as "class" legislation, it is that which permits a few sordid market-shooters to slaughter the birds of the whole people in order to sell them to a few epicures.

The game of a state belongs to the whole people of the state. The Supreme Court of the United States has so decided. (Geer vs. Connecticut). If it is abundant, it is a valuable asset. The great value of the game birds of America lies not in their meat pounds as they lie upon [Page 4] the table, but in the temptation they annually put before millions of field-weary farmers and desk-weary clerks and merchants to get into their beloved hunting togs, stalk out into the lap of Nature, and say "Begone, dull Care!"

And the man who has had a fine day in the painted woods, on the bright waters of a duck-haunted bay, or in the golden stubble of September, can fill his day and his soul with six good birds just as well as with sixty. The idea that in order to enjoy a fine day in the open a man must kill a wheel-barrow load of birds, is a mistaken idea; and if obstinately adhered to, it becomes vicious! The Outing in the Open is the thing,—not the blood-stained feathers, nasty viscera and Death in the game-bag. One quail on a fence is worth more to the world than ten in a bag.

The farmers of America have, by their own supineness and lack of foresight, permitted the slaughter of a stock of game birds which, had it been properly and wisely conserved, would have furnished a good annual shoot to every farming man and boy of sporting instincts through the past, right down to the present, and far beyond. They have allowed millions of dollars worth of their birds to be coolly snatched away from them by the greedy market-shooters.

There is one state in America, and so far as I know only one, in which there is at this moment an old-time abundance of game-bird life. That is the state of Louisiana. The reason is not so very far to seek. For the birds that do not migrate,—quail, wild turkeys and doves,—the cover is yet abundant. For the migratory game birds of the Mississippi Valley, Louisiana is a grand central depot, with terminal facilities that are unsurpassed. Her reedy shores, her vast marshes, her long coast line and abundance of food furnish what should be not only a haven but a heaven for ducks and geese. After running the gauntlet of guns all the way from Manitoba and Ontario to the Sunk Lands of Arkansas, the shores of the Gulf must seem like heaven itself.

The great forests of Louisiana shelter deer, turkeys, and fur-bearing animals galore; and rabbits and squirrels abound.

Naturally, this abundance of game has given rise to an extensive industry in shooting for the market. The "big interests" outside the state send their agents into the best game districts, often bringing in their own force of shooters. They comb out the game in enormous quantities, without leaving to the people of Louisiana any decent and fair quid-pro-quo for having despoiled them of their game and shipped a vast annual product outside, to create wealth elsewhere.

At present, however, we are but incidentally interested in the short-sightedness of the people of the Pelican State. As a state of oldtime abundance in killable game, the killing records that were kept in the year 1909-10 possess for us very great interest. They throw a startling searchlight on the subject of this chapter,—the former abundance of wild life.

From the records that with great pains and labor were gathered by the State Game Commission, and which were furnished me for use here by [Page 5] President Frank M. Miller, we set forth this remarkable exhibit of old-fashioned abundance in game, A.D. 1909.

Of the thousands of slaughtered robins, it would seem that no records exist. It is to be understood that the annual slaughter of wild life in Louisiana never before reached such a pitch as now. Without drastic measures, what will be the inevitable result? Does any man suppose that even the wild millions of Louisiana can long withstand such slaughter as that shown by the official figures given above? It is wildly impossible.

But the darkest hour is just before the dawn. At the session of the Louisiana legislature that was held in the spring of 1912, great improvements were made in the game laws of that state. The most important feature was the suppression of wholesale market hunting, by persons who are not residents of the state. A very limited amount of game may be sold and served as food in public places, but the restrictions placed upon this traffic are so effective that they will vastly reduce the annual slaughter. In other respects, also, the cause of wild life protection gained much; for which great credit is due to Mr. Edward A. McIlhenny.

It is the way of Americans to feel that because game is abundant in a given place at a given time, it always will be abundant, and may therefore be slaughtered without limit. That was the case last winter in California during the awful slaughter of band-tailed pigeons, as will be noted elsewhere.

It is time for all men to be told in the plainest terms that there never has existed, anywhere in historic times, a volume of wild life so great that civilized man could not quickly exterminate it by his methods of [Page 6] destruction. Lift the veil and look at the stories of the bison, the passenger pigeon, the wild ducks and shore birds of the Atlantic coast, and the fur-seal.

SHALL WE LEAVE ANY ONE OF THEM OPEN?

As reasoning beings, it is our duty to heed the lessons of history, and not rush blindly on until we perpetrate a continent destitute of wild life.

For educated, civilized Man to exterminate a valuable wild species of living things is a crime. It is a crime against his own children, and posterity.

No man has a right, either moral or legal, to destroy or squander an inheritance of his children that he holds for them in trust. And man, the wasteful and greedy spendthrift that he is, has not created even the humblest of the species of birds, mammals and fishes that adorn and enrich this earth. "The earth is THE LORD'S, and the fulness thereof!" With all his wisdom, man has not evolved and placed here so much as a ground-squirrel, a sparrow or a clam. It is true that he has juggled with the wild horse and sheep, the goats and the swine, and produced some hardy breeds that can withstand his abuse without going down before it; but as for species, he has not yet created and placed here even so much as a protozoan.

The wild things of this earth are not ours, to do with as we please. They have been given to us in trust, and we must account for them to the generations which will come after us and audit our accounts.

But man, the shameless destroyer of Nature's gifts, blithely and persistently exterminates one species after another. Fully ten per cent of the human race consists of people who will lie, steal, throw rubbish in parks, and destroy forests and wild life whenever and wherever they can do so without being stopped by a policemen and a club. These are hard words, but they are absolutely true. From ten per cent (or more) of the human race, the high moral instinct which is honest without compulsion is absent. The things that seemingly decent citizens,—men posing as gentlemen,—will do to wild game when they secure great chances to slaughter, are appalling. I could fill a book of this size with cases in point.

To-day the women of England, Europe and elsewhere are directly promoting the extermination of scores of beautiful species of wild birds by the devilish persistence with which they buy and wear feather ornaments made of their plumage. They are just as mean and cruel as the truck-driver who drives a horse with a sore shoulder and beats him on the street. But they do it! And appeals to them to do otherwise they laugh to scorn, saying, "I will wear what is fashionable, when I please and where I please!" As a famous bird protector of England has just written me, "The women of the smart set are beyond the reach of appeal or protest."

To-day, the thing that stares me in the face every waking hour, like a grisly spectre with bloody fang and claw, is the extermination of species. To me, that is a horrible thing. It is wholesale murder, no less. It is capital crime, and a black disgrace to the races of civilized mankind. I say "civilized mankind," because savages don't do it!

There are three kinds of extermination:

The practical extermination of a species means the destruction of its members to an extent so thorough and widespread that the species disappears from view, and living specimens of it can not be found by seeking for them. In North America this is to-day the status of the whooping crane, upland plover, and several other species. If any individuals are living, they will be met with only by accident.

The absolute extermination of a species means that not one individual of it remains alive. Judgment to this effect is based upon the lapse of time since the last living specimen was observed or killed. When five years have passed without a living "record" of a wild specimen, it is time to place a species in the class of the totally extinct.

Extermination in a wild state means that the only living representatives are in captivity or otherwise under protection. This is the case of the heath hen and David's deer, of China. The American bison is saved from being wholly extinct as a wild animal by the remnant of about 300 head in northern Athabasca, and 49 head in the Yellow-stone Park.

It is a serious thing to exterminate a species of any of the vertebrate animals. There are probably millions of people who do not realize that civilized (!) man is the most persistently and wickedly wasteful of all the predatory animals. The lions, the tigers, the bears, the eagles and hawks, serpents, and the fish-eating fishes, all live by destroying life; but they kill only what they think they can consume. If something is by chance left over, it goes to satisfy the hunger of the humbler creatures of prey. In a state of nature, where wild creatures prey upon wild creatures, such a thing as wanton, wholesale and utterly wasteful slaughter is almost unknown!

When the wild mink, weasel and skunk suddenly finds himself in the midst of scores of man's confined and helpless domestic fowls, or his caged gulls in a zoological park, an unusual criminal passion to murder for the joy of killing sometimes seizes the wild animal, and great slaughter is the result.

From the earliest historic times, it has been the way of savage man, red, black, brown and yellow, to kill as the wild animals do,—only what he can use, or thinks he can use. The Cree Indian impounded small herds of bison, and sometimes killed from 100 to 200 at one time; but it was to make sure of having enough meat and hides, and because he expected to use the product. I think that even the worst enemies of the plains Indians hardly will accuse them of killing large numbers of bison, elk or deer merely for the pleasure of seeing them fall, or taking only their teeth.

SIX RECENTLY EXTERMINATED NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS:
	Great Auk	Labrador Duck
	Eskimo Curlew	Pallas Cormorant
	Passenger Pigeon	Carolina Parrakee

It has remained for the wolf, the sheep-killing dog and civilized man to make records of wanton slaughter which puts them in a class together, [Page 10] and quite apart from other predatory animals. When a man can kill bison for their tongues alone, bull elk for their "tusks" alone, and shoot a whole colony of hippopotami,—actually damming a river with their bloated and putrid carcasses, all untouched by the knife,—the men who do such things must be classed with the cruel wolf and the criminal dog.

It is now desirable that we should pause in our career of destruction long enough to look back upon what we have recently accomplished in the total extinction of species, and also note what we have blocked out for the immediate future. Here let us erect a monument to the dead species of our own times.

It is to be doubted whether, up to this hour, any man has made a list of the species of North American birds that have become extinct during the past sixty years. The specialists have no time to spare from their compound differential microscopes, and the bird-killers are too busy with shooting, netting and clubbing to waste any time on such trifles as exterminated species. What does a market-shooter care about birds that can not be killed a second time? As for the farmers, they are so busy raising hogs and prices that their best friends, the birds, get scant attention from them,—until a hen-hawk takes a chicken!

Down South, the negroes and poor whites may slaughter robins for food by the ten thousand; but does the northern farmer bother his head about a trifle of that kind? No, indeed. Will he contribute any real money to help put a stop to it? Ask him yourself.

Let us pause long enough to reckon up some of our expenditures in species, and in millions of individuals. Let us set down here, in cold blood, a list of the species of our own North American birds that have been totally exterminated in our own times. After that we will have something to say about other species that soon will be exterminated; and the second task is much greater than the first.

The Great Auk, —Plautus impennis, (Linn.), was a sea-going diving bird about the size of a domestic goose, related to the guillemots, murres and puffins. For a bird endowed only with flipper-like wings, and therefore absolutely unable to fly, this species had an astonishing geographic range. It embraced the shores of northern Europe to North Cape, southern Greenland, southern Labrador, and the Atlantic coast of North America as far south as Massachusetts. Some say, "as far south as Massachusetts, the Carolinas and Florida," but that is a large order, and I leave the A.O.U. to prove that if it can. In the life history of this bird, a great tragedy was enacted in 1800 by sailors, on Funk Island, north of Newfoundland, where men were landed by a ship, and spent several months slaughtering great auks and trying out their fat for oil. In this process, the bodies of thousands of auks were burned as fuel, in working up the remains of tens of thousands of others.

On Funk Island, a favorite breeding-place, the great auk was exterminated in 1840, and in Iceland in 1844. Many natives ate this bird with relish, and being easily captured, either on land or sea, the commercialism of its day soon obliterated the species. The last living specimen was seen in 1852, and the last dead one was picked up in Trinity Bay, Ireland, in 1853. There are about 80 mounted and unmounted skins in existence, four skeletons, and quite a number of eggs. An egg is worth about $1200 and a good mounted skin at least double that sum.

The Labrador Duck, —Camptorhynchus labradoricus, (Gmel.).—This handsome sea-duck, of a species related to the eider ducks of arctic waters, became totally extinct about 1875, before the scientific world even knew that its existence was threatened. With this species, the exact and final cause of its extinction is to this day unknown. It is not at all probable, however, that its unfortunate blotting out from our bird fauna was due to natural causes, and when the truth becomes known, it is very probable that the hand of man will be revealed.

The Labrador duck bred in Labrador, and once frequented our Atlantic coast as far south as Chesapeake Bay; but it is said that it never was very numerous, at least during the twenty-five years preceding its disappearance. About thirty-five skins and mounted museum specimens are all that remain to prove its former existence, and I think there is not even one skeleton.

The Pallas Cormorant, —Carbo perspicillatus, (Pallas).—In 1741, when the Russian explorer, Commander Bering, discovered the Bering or Commander Islands, in the far-north Pacific, and landed upon them, he also discovered this striking bird species. Its plumage both above and below was a dark metallic green, with blue iridescence on the neck and purple on the shoulders. A pale ring of naked skin around each eye suggested the Latin specific name of this bird. The Pallas cormorant became totally extinct, through causes not positively known, about 1852.

The Passenger Pigeon, —Ectopistes migratoria, (Linn.).—We place this bird in the totally-extinct class, not only because it is extinct in a wild state, but only one solitary individual, a twenty-year-old female in the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, now remains alive. One living specimen and a few skins, skeletons and stuffed specimens are all that remain to show for the uncountable millions of pigeons that swarmed over the United States, only yesterday as it were!

There is no doubt about where those millions have gone. They went down and out by systematic, wholesale slaughter for the market and the pot, before the shotguns, clubs and nets of the earliest American pot-hunters. Wherever they nested they were slaughtered.

It is a long and shameful story, but the grisly skeleton of its Michigan chapter can be set forth in a few words. In 1869, from the town of Hartford, Mich., three car loads of dead pigeons were shipped to market each day for forty days, making a total of 11,880,000 birds. It is recorded that another Michigan town marketed 15,840,000 in two years. (See Mr. W.B. Mershon's book, "The Passenger Pigeon.")

Alexander Wilson, the pioneer American ornithologist, was the man who seriously endeavored to estimate by computations the total number of passenger pigeons in one flock that was seen by him. Here is what he has said in his "American Ornithology":

"To form a rough estimate of the daily consumption of one of these immense flocks, let us first attempt to calculate the numbers of that above mentioned, as seen in passing between Frankfort and the Indiana territory. If we suppose this column to have been one mile in breadth (and I believe it to have been much more) and that it moved at the rate of one mile in a minute, four hours, the time it continued passing, would make its whole length two hundred and forty miles. Again, supposing that each square yard of this moving body comprehended three pigeons; the square yards in the whole space multiplied by three would give 2,230,272,000 pigeons! An almost inconceivable multitude, and yet probably far below the actual amount."

"Happening to go ashore one charming afternoon, to purchase some milk at a house that stood near the river, and while talking with the people within doors, I was suddenly struck with astonishment at a loud rushing roar, succeeded by instant darkness, which, on the first moment, I took for a tornado about to overwhelm the house and every thing around in destruction. The people observing my surprise, coolly said, 'It is only the pigeons!' On running out I beheld a flock, thirty or forty yards in width, sweeping along very low, between the house and the mountain or height that formed the second bank of the river. These continued passing for more than a quarter of an hour, and at length varied their bearing so as to pass over the mountains, behind which they disappeared before the rear came up.

"In the Atlantic States, though they never appear in such unparalleled multitudes, they are sometimes very numerous; and great havoc is then made amongst them with the gun, the clap-net, and various other implements of destruction. As soon as it is ascertained in a town that the pigeons are flying numerously in the neighborhood, the gunners rise en masse; the clap-nets are spread out on suitable situations, commonly on an open height in an old buckwheat field, four or five live pigeons, with their eyelids sewed up, [A] are fastened on a movable stick, a small hut of branches is fitted up for the fowler at the distance of forty or fifty yards. By the pulling of a string, the stick on which the pigeons rest is alternately elevated and depressed, which produces a fluttering of their wings, similar to that of birds alighting. This being perceived by the passing flocks, they descend with great rapidity, and finding corn, buckwheat, etc, strewed about, begin to feed, and are instantly, by the pulling of a cord, covered by the net. In this manner ten, twenty, and even thirty dozen have been caught [Page 13] at one sweep. Meantime the air is darkened with large bodies of them moving in various directions; the woods also swarm with them in search of acorns, and the thundering of musquetry is perpetual on all sides from morning to night. Wagon loads of them are poured into market, where they sell from fifty to twenty-five and even twelve cents per dozen; and pigeons become the order of the day at dinner, breakfast and supper, until the very name becomes sickening."

The range of the passenger pigeon covered nearly the whole United States from the Atlantic coast westward to the Rocky Mountains. A few bold pigeons crossed the Rocky Mountains into Oregon, northern California and Washington, but only as "stragglers," few and far between. The wide range of this bird was worthy of a species that existed in millions, and it was persecuted literally all along the line. The greatest slaughter was in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1848 Massachusetts gravely passed a law protecting the netters of wild pigeons from foreign interference! There was a fine of $10 for damaging nets, or frightening pigeons away from them. This was on the theory that the pigeons were so abundant they could not by any possibility ever become scarce, and that pigeon-slaughter was a legitimate industry.

In 1867, the State of New York found that the wild pigeon needed protection, and enacted a law to that effect. The year 1868 was the last year in which great numbers of passenger pigeons nested in that State. Eaton, in "The Birds of New York," said that "millions of birds occupied the timber along Bell's Run, near Ceres, Alleghany County, on the Pennsylvania line."

In 1870, Massachusetts gave pigeons protection except during an "open season," and in 1878 Pennsylvania elected to protect pigeons on their nesting grounds.

The passenger pigeon millions were destroyed so quickly, and so thoroughly en masse, that the American people utterly failed to comprehend it, and for thirty years obstinately refused to believe that the species had been suddenly wiped off the map of North America. There was years of talk about the great flocks having "taken refuge in South America," or in Mexico, and being still in existence. There were surmises about their having all "gone out to sea," and perished on the briny deep.

A thousand times, at least, wild pigeons have been "reported" as having been "seen." These rumors have covered nearly every northern state, the whole of the southwest, and California. For years and years we have been patiently writing letters to explain over and over that the band-tailed pigeon of the Pacific coast, and the red-billed pigeon of Arizona and the southwest are neither of them the passenger pigeon, and never can be.

There was a long period wherein we believed many of the pigeon reports that came from the states where the birds once were most numerous; but that period has absolutely passed. During the past five years large cash [Page 14] rewards, aggregating about $5000, have been offered for the discovery of one nesting pair of genuine passenger pigeons. Many persons have claimed this reward (of Professor C.F. Hodge, of Clark University, Worcester, Mass.), and many claims have been investigated. The results have disclosed many mourning doves, but not one pigeon. Now we understand that the quest is closed, and hope has been abandoned.

The passenger pigeon is a dead species. The last wild specimen (so we believe) that ever will reach the hands of man, was taken near Detroit, Michigan, on Sept. 14, 1908, and mounted by C. Campion. That is the one definite, positive record of the past ten years.

The fate of this species should be a lasting lesson to the world at large. Any wild bird or mammal species can be exterminated by commercial interests in twenty years time, or less.

The Eskimo Curlew, —Numenius borealis, (Forst.). This valuable game bird once ranged all along the Atlantic coast of North America, and wherever found it was prized for the table. It preferred the fields and meadows to the shore lines, and was the companion of the plovers of the uplands, especially the golden plover. "About 1872," says Mr. Forbush, "there was a great flight of these birds on Cape Cod and Nantucket. They were everywhere; and enormous numbers were killed. They could be bought of boys at six cents apiece. Two men killed $300 worth of these birds at that time."

Apparently, that was the beginning of the end of the "dough bird," which was another name for this curlew. In 1908 Mr. G.H. Mackay stated that this bird and the golden plover had decreased 90 per cent in fifty years, and in the last ten years of that period 90 per cent of the remainder had gone. "Now (1908)," says Mr. Forbush, "ornithologists believe that the Eskimo curlew is practically extinct, as only a few specimens have been recorded since the beginning of the twentieth century." The very last record is of two specimens collected at Waco, York County, Nebraska, in March, 1911, and recorded by Mr. August Eiche. Of course, it is possible that other individuals may still survive; but so far as our knowledge extends, the species is absolutely dead.

In the West Indies and the Guadeloupe Islands, five species of macaws and parrakeets have passed out without any serious note of their disappearance on the part of the people of the United States. It is at least time to write brief obituary notices of them.

We are indebted to the Hon. Walter Rothschild, of Tring, England, for essential facts regarding these species as set forth in his sumptuous work "Extinct Birds".

The Cuban Tricolored Macaw, —Ara tricolor, (Gm.). In 1875, when the author visited Cuba and the Isle of Pines, he was informed by Professor Poey that he was "about ten years too late" to find this fine species alive. It was exterminated for food purposes, about 1864, and only four specimens are known to be in existence.

[Page 15]

Gosse's Macaw, —Ara gossei, (Roth.).—This species once inhabited the Island of Jamaica. It was exterminated about 1800, and so far as known not one specimen of it is in existence.

Guadeloupe Macaw, —Ara guadeloupensis, (Clark).—All that is known of the life history of this large bird is that once it inhabited the Guadeloupe Islands. The date and history of its disappearance are both unknown, and there is not one specimen of it in existence.

Yellow-Winged Green Parrot, —Amazona olivacea, (Gm.).—Of the history of this Guadeloupe species, also, nothing is known, and there appear to be no specimens of it in existence.

Purple Guadeloupe Parrakeet, —Anodorhynchus purpurescens, (Rothschild).—This is another dead species, that once lived in the Guadeloupe Islands, and passed away silently and unnoticed at the time, leaving no records of its existence, and no specimens.

The Carolina Parrakeet, —Conuropsis carolinensis, (Linn.), brings us down to the present moment. To this charming little green-and-yellow bird, we are in the very act of bidding everlasting farewell. Ten specimens remain alive in captivity, six of which are in the Cincinnati Zoological Garden, three are in the Washington Zoological Park and one is in the New York Zoological Park.

Regarding wild specimens, it is possible that some yet remain, in some obscure and neglected corner of Florida; but it is extremely doubtful whether the world ever will find any of them alive. Mrs. Minnie Moore Willson, of Kissimee, Fla. reports the species as totally extinct in Florida. Unless we would strain at a gnat, we may just as well enter this species in the dead class; for there is no reason to hope that any more wild specimens ever will be found.

The former range of this species embraced the whole southeastern and central United States. From the Gulf it extended to Albany, N.Y., northern Ohio and Indiana, northern Iowa, Nebraska, central Colorado and eastern Texas, from which it will be seen that once it was widely distributed. It was shot because it was destructive to fruit and for its plumage, and many were trapped alive, to be kept in captivity. I know that one colony, near the mouth of the Sebastian River, east coast of Florida, was exterminated in 1898 by a local hunter, and I regret to say that it was done in the hope of selling the living birds to a New York bird-dealer. By holding bags over the holes in which the birds were nesting, the entire colony, of about 16 birds, was caught.

Everywhere else than in Florida, the Carolina parrakeet has long been extinct. In 1904 a flock of 13 birds was seen near Lake Okechobee; but in Florida many calamities can overtake a flock of birds in eight years. The birds in captivity are not breeding, and so far as perpetuation by them is concerned, they are only one remove from mounted museum specimens. This parrakeet is the only member of its order that ranged into the United States during our own times, and with its disappearance the Order Psittaciformes totally disappears from our country.

In the world of human beings, murder is the most serious of all crimes. To take from a man that which no one ever can restore to him, his life, is murder; and its penalty is the most severe of all penalties.

There are circumstances under which the killing of a wild animal may be so wanton, so revolting and so utterly reprehensible that the act may justly be classed as murder. The man who kills a walrus from the deck of a steamer that he knows will not stop; the man who wantonly killed the whole colony of hippopotami that Mr. Dugmore photographed in life; the man who last winter shot bull elk in Wyoming for their two ugly and shapeless teeth, and the man who wantonly shot down a half-tame deer "for fun" near Carmel, Putnam County, New York, in the summer of 1912,—all were guilty of murdering wild animals.

The murder of a wild animal species consists in taking from it that which man with all his cunning and all his preserves and breeding can not give back to it,—its God-given place in the ranks of Living Things. Where is man's boasted intelligence, or his sense of proportion, that every man does not see the monstrous moral obliquity involved in the destruction of a species!

If the beautiful Taj Mehal at Agra should be destroyed by vandals, the intelligent portion of humanity would be profoundly shocked, even though the hand of man could at will restore the shrine of sorrowing love. To-day the great Indian rhinoceros, certainly one of the most wonderful four-footed animals still surviving, is actually being exterminated; and even the people of India and England are viewing it with an indifference that is appalling. Of course there are among Englishmen a great many sportsmen and several zoologists who really care; but they do not constitute one-tenth of one per-cent of the men who ought to care!

In the museums, we stand in awe and wonder before the fossil skeleton of the Megatherium, and the savants struggle to unveil its past, while the equally great and marvelous Rhinoceros indicus is being rushed into oblivion. We marvel at the fossil shell of the gigantic turtle called Collosochelys atlas, while the last living representatives of the gigantic land tortoises are being exterminated in the Galapagos Islands and the Sychelles, for their paltry oil and meat; and only one man (Hon. Walter Rothschild) is doing aught to save any of them in their haunts, where they can breed. The dodo of Mauritius was exterminated by swine, whose bipedal descendants have exterminated many other species since that time.

A failure to appreciate either the beauty or the value of our living birds, quadrupeds and fishes is the hall-mark of arrested mental development and ignorance. The victim is not always to blame; but in this practical world the cornerstone of legal jurisprudence is the inexorable principle that "ignorance of the law excuses no man."

These pages are addressed to my countrymen, and the world at large, not as a reproach upon the dead Past which is gone beyond recall, but in the faint hope of somewhere and somehow arousing forces that will reform the Present and save the Future. The extermination of wild species that now is proceeding throughout the world, is a dreadful thing. It is not only injurious to the economy of the world, but it is a shame and a disgrace to the civilized portion of the human race.

It is of little avail that I should here enter into a detailed description of each species that now is being railroaded into oblivion. The bookshelves of intelligent men and women are filled with beautiful and adequate books on birds and quadrupeds, wherein the status of each species may be determined, almost without effort. There is time and space only in which to notice the most prominent of the doomed species, and perhaps discuss a few examples by way of illustration. Here is a

The Whooping Crane. —This splendid bird will almost certainly be the next North American species to be totally exterminated. It is the only new world rival of the numerous large and showy cranes of the old world; for the sandhill crane is not in the same class as the white, black and blue giants of Asia. We will part from our stately Grus americanus with profound sorrow, for on this continent we ne'er shall see his like again.

The well-nigh total disappearance of this species has been brought close home to us by the fact that there are less than half a dozen individuals alive in captivity, while in a wild state the bird is so rare as to be quite unobtainable. For example, for nearly five years an English [Page 19] gentlemen has been offering $1,000 for a pair, and the most enterprising bird collector in America has been quite unable to fill the order. So far as our information extends, the last living specimen captured was taken six or seven years ago. The last wild birds seen and reported were observed by Ernest Thompson Seton, who saw five below Fort McMurray, Saskatchewan, October 16th, 1907, and by John F. Ferry, who saw one at Big Quill Lake, Saskatchewan, in June, 1909.

The range of this species once covered the eastern two-thirds of the continent of North America. It extended from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountains, and from Great Bear Lake to Florida and Texas. Eastward of the Mississippi it has for twenty years been totally extinct, and the last specimens taken alive were found in Kansas and Nebraska.

WHOOPING CRANES IN THE ZOOLOGICAL PARK

Very Soon this Species will Become Totally Extinct.

The Trumpeter Swan. —Six years ago this species was regarded as so nearly extinct that a doubting ornithological club of Boston refused to believe on hearsay evidence that the New York Zoological Park contained a pair of living birds, and a committee was appointed, to investigate in person, and report. Even at that time, skins were worth all the way from $100 to $150 each; and when swan skins sell at either of those figures it is because there are people who believe that the species either is on the verge of extinction, or has passed it. The pair referred to above [Page 20] was acquired in 1900. Since that time, Dr. Leonard C. Sanford procured in 1910 two living birds from a bird dealer who obtained them on the coast of Virginia. We have done our utmost to induce our pair to breed, but without any further results than nest-building.

The loss of the trumpeter swan (Olor americanus) will not be so great, nor felt so keenly, as the blotting out of the whooping crane. It so closely resembles the whistling swan that only an ornithologist can recognize the difference, a yellow spot on the side of the upper mandible, near its base. The whistling swan yet remains in fair numbers, but it is to be feared that soon it will go as the trumpeter has gone.

The American Flamingo, Scarlet Ibis And Roseate Spoonbill are three of the most beautiful and curious water-haunting birds of the tropics. Once all three species inhabited portions of the southern United States; but now all three are gone from our star-spangled bird fauna. The brilliant scarlet plumage of the flamingo and ibis, and the exquisite pink rose-color and white of the spoonbill naturally attracted the evil eyes of the "milliner's taxidermists" and other bird-butchers. From Florida these birds quickly vanished. The six great breeding colonies of Flamingoes on Andros Island, Bahamas, have been reduced to two, and from Prof. E.A. Goeldi, of the State Museum Goeldi, Para, Brazil, have come bitter complaints of the slaughter of scarlet ibises in South America by plume-hunters in European pay.

I know not how other naturalists regard the future of the three species named above, but my opinion is that unless the European feather trade is quickly stopped as to wild plumage, they are absolutely certain to be shot into total oblivion, within a very few years. The plumage of these birds has so much commercial value, for fishermen's flies as well as for women's hats, that the birds will be killed as long as their feathers can be sold and any birds remain alive.

Zoologically, the flamingo is the most odd and interesting bird on the American continent except the emperor penguin. Its beak baffles description, its long legs and webbed feet are a joke, its nesting habits are amazing, and its food habits the despair of most zoological-garden keepers. Millions of flamingos inhabit the shores of a number of small lakes in the interior of equatorial East Africa, but that species is not brilliant scarlet all over the neck and head, as is the case with our species.

If the American flamingo, scarlet ibis and roseate spoonbill, one or all of them, are to be saved from total extinction, efforts must be made in each of the countries in which they breed and live. Their preservation is distinctly a burden upon the countries of South America that lie eastward of the Andes, and on Yucatan, Cuba and the Bahamas. The time has come when the Government of the Bahama Islands should sternly forbid the killing of any more flamingos, on any pretext whatever; and if the capture of living specimens for exhibition purposes militates against the welfare of the colonies, they should forbid that also.

The Upland Plover, Or "Bartramian Sandpiper." —Apparently this is the next shore-bird species that will follow the Eskimo curlew into [Page 21] oblivion. Four years ago,—a long period for a species that is on the edge of extermination,—Mr. E.H. Forbush [B] wrote of it as follows:

"The Bartramian Sandpiper, commonly known as the Upland Plover, a bird which formerly bred on grassy hills all over the State and migrated southward along our coasts in great flocks, is in imminent danger of extirpation. A few still breed in Worcester and Berkshire Counties, or Nantucket, so there is still a nucleus which, if protected, may save the species. Five reports from localities where this bird formerly bred give it as nearing extinction, and four as extinct. This is one of the most useful of all birds in grass land, feeding largely on grasshoppers and cutworms. It is one of the finest of all birds for the table. An effort should be made at once to save this useful species."

The Black-Capped Petrel, (Aestrelata hasitata). —This species is already recorded in the A.O.U. "Check list" as extinct; but it appears that this may not as yet be absolutely true. On January 1, 1912, a strange thing happened. A much battered and exhausted black-capped petrel was picked up alive in Central Park, New York, taken to the menagerie, and kept there during the few days that it survived. When it died it was sent to the American Museum; and this may easily prove to be the last living record for that species. In reality, this species might as well be listed with those totally extinct. Formerly it ranged from the Antilles to Ohio and Ontario, and the causes of its blotting out are not yet definitely known.

This ocean-going bird once had a wide range overseas in the temperate areas of the North Atlantic. It is recorded from Ulster County, New York, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and Florida. It was about of the size of the common tern.

The California Condor, (Gymnogyps californianus). —I feel that the existence of this species hangs on a very slender thread. This is due to its alarmingly small range, the insignificant number of individuals now living, the openness of the species to attack, and the danger of its extinction by poison. Originally this remarkable bird,—the largest North American bird of prey,—ranged as far northward as the Columbia River, and southward for an unknown distance. Now its range is reduced to seven counties in southern California, although it is said to extend from Monterey Bay to Lower California, and eastward to Arizona.

Regarding the present status and the future of this bird, I have been greatly disturbed in mind. When a unique and zoologically important species becomes reduced in its geographic range to a small section of a single state, it seems to me quite time for alarm. For some time I have counted this bird as one of those threatened with early extermination, and as I think with good reason. In view of the swift calamities that now seem able to fall on species like thunderbolts out of clear skies, and wipe them off the earth even before we know that such a fate is [Page 22] impending, no species of seven-county distribution is safe. Any species that is limited to a few counties of a single state is liable to be wiped out in five years, by poison, or traps, or lack of food.

CALIFORNIA CONDOR

Now Living in the New York Zoological Park

On order to obtain the best and also the most conservative information regarding this species, I appealed to the Curator of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, of the University of California. Although written in the mountain wilds, I promptly received the valuable contribution that appears below. As a clear, precise and conservative survey of an important species, it is really a model document.

By Joseph Grinnell

"To my knowledge, the California Condor has been definitely observed within the past five years in the following California counties: Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Kern, and Tulare. In parts of Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Kern counties the species is still fairly common, for a large bird, probably equal in numbers to the golden eagle in those regions that are suited to [Page 23] it. By suitable country I mean cattle-raising, mountainous territory, of which there are still vast areas, and which are not likely to be put to any other use for a very long time, if ever, on account of the lack of water.

"While in Kern County last April, I was informed by a reliable man who lives near the Tejon Rancho that he had counted twenty-five condors in a single day, since January 1 of the present year. These were on the Tejon Rancho, which is an enormous cattle range covering parts of the Tehachapi and San Emigdio Mountains.

"Our present state law provides complete protection for the condor and its eggs; and the State Fish and Game Commission, in granting permits for collectors, always adds the phrase—'except the California condor and its eggs.' I know of two special permits having been issued, but neither of these were used; that is, no 'specimens' have been taken since 1908, as far as I am aware.

"In my travels about the state, I have found that practically everyone knows that the condor is protected. Still, there is always the hunting element who do not hesitate to shoot anything alive and out of the ordinary, and a certain percentage of the condors are doubtless picked off each year by such criminals. It is possible, also, that the mercenary egg-collector continues to take his annual rents, though if this is done it is kept very quiet. It is my impression that the present fatalities from all sources are fully balanced by the natural rate of increase.

"There is one factor that has militated against the condor more than any other one thing; namely, the restriction in its food source. Its forage range formerly included most of the great valleys adjacent to its mountain retreats. But now the valleys are almost entirely devoted to agriculture, and of course far more thickly settled than formerly.

"The mountainous areas where the condor is making its last stand seem to me likely to remain adapted to the bird's existence for many years,—fifty years, if not longer. Of course, this is conditional upon the maintenance and enforcement of the present laws. There is also the enlightenment of public sentiment in regard to the preservation of wild life, which I believe can be depended upon. This is a matter of general education, which is, fortunately, and with no doubt whatever, progressing at a quite perceptible rate.

"Yes; I should say that the condor has a fair chance to survive, in limited numbers.

"Another bird which in my opinion is far nearer extinction than the condor, so far as California is concerned, is the white-tailed kite. This is a perfectly harmless bird, but one which harries over the marshes, where it has been an easy target for the idle duck-hunter. Then, too, its range was limited to the valley bottoms, where human settlement is increasingly close. I know of only two live pairs within the state last year!

"Finally, let me remark that the rate of increase of the California condor is not one whit less than that of the band-tailed pigeon! Yet, [Page 24] there is no protection at all for the latter in this state, even in the nesting season; and thousands were shot last spring, in the unprecedented concentration of the species in the southern coast counties. (See Chambers in The Condor for May, 1912, p. 108.)"

The California Condor is one of the only two species of condor now living, and it is the only one found in North America. As a matter of national pride, and a duty to posterity, the people of the United States can far better afford to lose a million dollars from their national treasury than to allow that bird to become extinct. Its preservation for all coming time is distinctly a white man's burden upon the state of California. The laws now in force for the condor's protection are not half adequate! I think there is no law by which the accidental poisoning of those birds, by baits put out for coyotes and foxes, can be stopped. A law to prevent the use of poisoned meat baits anywhere in southern California, should be enacted at the next session of California's legislature. The fine for molesting a condor should be raised to $500, with a long prison-term as an alternative. A competent, interested game warden should be appointed solely for the protection of the condors. It is time to count those birds, keep them under observation, and have an annual report upon their condition.

The Heath Hen. —But for the protection that has been provided for it by the ornithologists of Massachusetts, and particularly Dr. George W. Field, William Brewster and John E. Thayer, the heath hen or eastern pinnated grouse would years ago have become totally extinct. New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts began to protect that species entirely too late. It was given five-year close seasons, without avail. Then it was given ten-year close seasons, but it was too late!

To-day, the species exists only in one locality, the island of Martha's Vineyard, and concerning its present status, Mr. Forbush has recently furnished us the following clear statement:

"The heath hens increased for two years after the Massachusetts Fish and Game Commission established a reservation for them, but in 1911 they had not increased. There are probably about two hundred birds extant.

"I found a great many marsh hawks on the Island and the Commission did not kill them, believing them to be beneficial. In watching them, I concluded that they were catching the young heath hens. A large number of these hawks have been shot and their stomachs sent to Washington for examination, as I was too busy at the time to examine them. So far as I know, no report of the examination has been made, but Dr. Field himself examined a few of the stomachs and found the remains of the heath hen in some.

"The warden now says that during the past two years, the heath hen has not increased, but I can give you no definite evidence of this. I am quite sure they are being killed by natives of the island and that at least one collector supplies birds for museums. We are trying to get evidence of this.

I believe if the heath hen is to be increased in numbers and brought back to this country, we shall have to have more than one warden on the reservation and, eventually, we shall have to establish the bird on the mainland also."

From the "American Natural History"

PINNATED GROUSE, OR "PRAIRIE CHICKEN"

The Pinnated Grouse, Sage Grouse And Prairie Sharp-Tail. —In view of the fate of the grouse of the United States, as it has been wrought out thus far in all the more thickly settled areas, and particularly in view of the history of the heath hen, we have no choice but to regard all three of the species named above as absolutely certain to become totally extinct, within a short period of years, unless the conditions surrounding them are immediately and radically changed for the better. Personally, I do not believe that the gunners and game-hogs of Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California will permit any one of those species to be saved.

SAGE GROUSE The First of the Upland Game Birds that will Become Extinct

If the present open seasons prevail in the states that I have mentioned above, no power on earth can save those three species of grouse from the fate of the heath hen. To-day their representatives exist only in small shreds and patches, and from fully nineteen-twentieths of their original ranges they are forever gone.

The sage grouse will be the first species to go. It is the largest, the most conspicuous, the one most easily found, and the biggest mark for the gunner. Those who have seen this bird in its native sage-brush well understand how fatally it is exposed to slaughter.

Many appeals have been made in behalf of the pinnated grouse; but the open seasons continue. The gunners of the states in which a few remnants still exist are determined to have them, all; and the state legislatures seem disposed to allow the killers to have their way. It may be [Page 26] however, that like New York with the heath hen, they will arouse and virtuously lock the stable door—after the horse has been stolen!

The Snowy Egret And American Egret, (Egretta candidissima and Herodias egretta). —These unfortunate birds, cursed for all time by the commercially valuable "aigrette" plumes that they bear, have had a very narrow escape from total extinction in the United States, despite all the efforts made to save them. The "plume-hunters" of the millinery trade have been, and still are, determined to have the last feather and the last drop of egret blood. In an effort to stop the slaughter in at least one locality in Florida, Warden Guy Bradley was killed by a plume-hunter, who of course escaped all punishment through the heaven-born "sympathy" of a local jury.

Of the bloody egret slaughter in Florida, not one-tenth of the whole story ever has been told. Millions of adult birds,—all there were,—were killed in the breeding season, when the plumes were ripe for the market; and millions of young birds starved in their nests. It was a common thing for a rookery of several hundred birds to be attacked by the plume-hunters, and in two or three days utterly destroyed. The same bloody work is going on to-day in Venezuela and Brazil; and the stories and "affidavits" stating that the millions of egret plumes being shipped annually from those countries are "shed feathers," "picked up off the ground," are absolute lies. The men who have sworn to those lies are perjurers, and should be punished for their crimes. (See Chapter XIII).

By 1908, the plume-hunters had so far won the fight for the egrets that Florida had been swept almost as bare of these birds as the Colorado desert.

Until Mr. E.A. McIlhenny's egret preserve, at Avery Island, Louisiana, became a pronounced success, we had believed that our two egrets soon would become totally extinct in the United States. But Mr. McIlhenny has certainly saved those birds to our fauna. In 1892 he started an egret and heron preserve, close beside his house on Avery Island. By 1900 it was an established success. To-day 20,000 pairs of egrets and herons are living and breeding in that bird refuge, and the two egret species are safe in at least one spot in our own country.

Photo by E.A. McIlhenny

SNOWY EGRETS IN THE McILHENNY EGRET PRESERVE

It is at This Period That the Parent Birds are Killed for Their Plumes, and the Young Starve in the Nest

Three years ago, I think there were not many bird-lovers in the United States, who believed it possible to prevent the total extinction of both egrets from our fauna. All the known rookeries accessible to plume-hunters had been totally destroyed. Two years ago, the secret discovery of several small, hidden colonies prompted William Dutcher, President of the National Association of Audubon Societies, and Mr. T. Gilbert Pearson, Secretary, to attempt the protection of those colonies. With a fund contributed for the purpose, wardens were hired and duly commissioned. As previously stated, one of those wardens was shot dead in cold blood by a plume hunter. The task of guarding swamp rookeries from the attacks of money-hungry desperadoes to whom the accursed plumes were worth their weight in gold, is a very chancy proceeding. There is now one warden in Florida who says that "before they get my rookery they will first have to get me."

Thus far the protective work of the Audubon Association has been successful. Now there are twenty colonies, which contain all told, about 5,000 egrets and about 120,000 herons and ibises which are guarded by the Audubon wardens. One of the most important is on Bird Island, a mile out in Orange Lake, central Florida, and it is ably defended by Oscar E. Baynard. To-day, the plume hunters who do not dare to raid the guarded rookeries are trying to study out the lines of flight of the birds, to and from their feeding-grounds, and shoot them in transit. Their motto is—"Anything to beat the law, and get the plumes." It is there that the state of Florida should take part in the war.

The success of this campaign is attested by the fact that last year a number of egrets were seen in eastern Massachusetts—for the first time in many years. And so to-day the question is, can the wardens continue to hold the plume-hunters at bay?

The Wood Duck (Aix sponsa), by many bird-lovers regarded as the most beautiful of all American birds, is threatened with extinction, in all the states that it still inhabits with the exception of eight. Long ago (1901) the U.S. Biological Survey sounded a general alarm for this species by the issue of a special bulletin regarding its disappearance, and advising its protection by long close seasons. To their everlasting honor, eight states responded, by the enactment of long close-season laws. This, is the

WOOD DUCK Regularly Killed as "Food" in 15 States

And how is it with the other states that number the wood-duck in their avian faunas? I am ashamed to tell; but it is necessary that the truth should be known.

Surely we will find that if the other states have not the grace to protect this bird on account of its exquisite beauty they will not penalize it by extra long open seasons.

A number of them have taken pains to provide extra long OPEN seasons on this species, usually of five or six months!! And this for a bird so exquisitely beautiful that shooting it for the table is like dining on birds of paradise. Here is a partial list of them:

The above are the states that really possess the wood-duck and that should give it, one and all, a series of five-year close seasons. Now, is not the record something to blush for?

Is there in those fifteen states nothing too beautiful or too good to go into the pot?

The Woodcock (Philohela minor), is a bird regarding which my bird-hunting friends and I do not agree. I say that as a species it is steadily disappearing, and presently will become extinct, unless it is accorded better protection. They reply: "Well, I can show you where there are woodcock yet!"

A few months ago a Nova Scotian writer in Forest and Stream came out with the bold prediction that three more years of the usual annual slaughter of woodcock will bring the species to the verge of extinction in that Province.

It is such occurrences as this that bring the end of a species:

"Last fall [1911, at Norwalk, Conn.] we had a good flight of woodcock, and it is a shame the way they were slaughtered. I know of a number of cases where twenty were killed by one gun in the day, and heard of one case of fifty. This is all wrong, and means the end of the woodcock, if continued. There is no doubt we need a bag limit on woodcock, as much as on quail or partridge." ("Woodcock" in Forest and Stream, Mar. 2, 1912.)

As far back as 1901, Dr. A.K. Fisher of the Biological Survey predicted that the woodcock and wood-duck would both become extinct unless better protected. As yet, the better protection demanded has not materialized to any great extent.

Says Mr. Forbush, State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, in his admirable "Special Report," p. 45:

"The woodcock is decreasing all over its range in the East, and needs the strongest protection. Of thirty-eight Massachusetts reports, thirty-six state that "woodcock are decreasing," "rare" or "extinct," while one states that they are holding their own, and one that they are increasing slightly since the law was passed prohibiting their sale."

Let not any honest American or Canadian sportsman lullaby himself into the belief that the woodcock is safe from extermination. As sure as the world, it is going! The fact that a little pocket here or there contains a few birds does not in the slightest degree disprove the main fact. If the sportsmen of this country desire to save the seed stock of woodcock, they must give it everywhere five or ten-year close seasons, and do it immediately!

Our Shore Birds In General. —This group of game birds will be the first to be exterminated in North America as a group. Of all our birds, these are the most illy fitted to survive. They are very conspicuous, very unwary, easy to find if alive, and easy to shoot. Never in my life have any shore birds except woodcock and snipe appealed to me as real game. They are too easy to kill, too trivial when killed, and some of them are too rank and fishy on the plate. As game for men I place them on a level with barnyard ducks or orchard turkeys. I would as soon be caught stealing a sheep as to be seen trying to shoot fishy yellow legs or little joke sandpipers for the purpose of feeding upon them. And yet, thousands of full-grown men, some of them six feet high, grow indignant [Page 31] and turn red in the face at the mention of a law to give all the shore-birds of New York a five-year close season.

But for all that, gentlemen of the gun, there are exactly two alternatives between which you shall choose:

(1) Either give the woodcock of the eastern United States just ten times the protection that it now has, or (2) bid the species a long farewell. If you elect to slaughter old Philohela minor on the altar of Selfishness, then it will be in order for the millions of people who do not kill birds to say whether that proposal shall be consummated or not.

Read if you please Mr. W.A. McAtee's convincing pamphlet (Biological Survey, No. 79), on "Our Vanishing Shore Birds," reproduced in full in Chapter XXIII. He says: "Throughout the eastern United States, shore birds are fast vanishing. Many of them have been so reduced that extermination seems imminent. So averse to shore birds are present conditions [of slaughter] that the wonder is that any escape. All the shore birds of the United States are in great need of better protection.... Shore birds have been hunted until only a remnant of their once vast numbers are left. Their limited powers of reproduction, coupled with the natural vicissitudes of the breeding period, make their increase slow, and peculiarly expose them to danger of extermination. So great is their economic value that their retention in the game list and their destruction by sportsmen is a serious loss to agriculture."

And yet, here in New York state there are many men who think they "know," who indignantly scoff at the idea that our shore birds need a five-year close season to help save them from annihilation. The writer's appeal for this at a recent convention of the New York State Fish, Game and Forest League fell upon deaf ears, and was not even seriously discussed.

The shore-birds must be saved; and just at present it seems that the only persons who will do it are those who are not sportsmen, and who never kill game! If the sportsmen persist in refusing to act, to them we must appeal.

Besides the woodcock and snipe, the species that are most seriously threatened with extinction at an early date are the following:

Of these fine species, Mr. Forbush, whose excellent knowledge of the shore birds of the Atlantic coast is well worth the most serious consideration, says that the upland plover, or Bartramian sandpiper, "is [Page 32] in imminent danger of extinction. Five reports from localities where this bird formerly bred give it as nearing extinction, and four as extinct. This is one of the most useful of all birds in grass land, feeding largely on grasshoppers and cutworms.... There is no difference of opinion in regard to the diminution of the shore birds; the reports from all quarters are the same. It is noteworthy that practically all observers agree that, considering all species, these birds have fallen off about 75 per cent within twenty-five to forty years, and that several species are nearly extirpated."

In 1897 when the Zoological Society published my report on the "Extermination of Our Birds and Mammals," we put down the decrease in the volume of bird life in Massachusetts during the previous fifteen years at twenty-seven per cent. The later and more elaborate investigations of Mr. Forbush have satisfactorily vindicated the accuracy of that estimate.

There are other North American birds that easily might be added to the list of those now on the road to oblivion; but surely the foregoing citations are sufficient to reveal the present desperate conditions of our bird life in general. Now the question is: What are the great American people going to do about it?

THE GRAY SQUIRREL, A FAMILIAR FRIEND WHEN PROTECTED

The Gray Squirrel. —The gray squirrel is in danger of extermination. Although it is our most beautiful and companionable small wild animal, and really unfit for food, Americans have strangely elected to class it [Page 33] as "game," and shoot it to death, to eat! And this in stall-fed America, in the twentieth century! Americans are the only white people in the world who eat squirrels. It would be just as reasonable, and no more barbarous, to kill domestic cats and eat them. Their flesh would taste quite as good as squirrel flesh and some of them would afford quite as good "sport."

Every intelligent person knows that in the United States the deadly shot-gun is rapidly exterminating every bird and every small mammal that is classed as "game," and which legally may be killed, even during two months of the twelve. The market gunners slaughter ducks, grouse, shore birds and rabbits as if we were all starving.

The beautiful gray squirrel has clung to life in a few of our forests and wood-lots, long after most other wild mammals have disappeared; but throughout at least ninety-five per cent, of its original area, it is now extinct. During the past thirty years I have roamed the woods of my state in several widely separated localities,—the Adirondacks, Catskills, Berkshires, western New York and elsewhere, and in all that time I have seen only three wild gray squirrels outside of city parks.

Except over a very small total area, the gray squirrel is already gone from the wild fauna of New York State!

Do the well-fed people of America wish to have this beautiful animal entirely exterminated? Do they wish the woods to become wholly lifeless? Or, do they desire to bring back some of the wild creatures, and keep them for their children to enjoy?

There is no wild mammal that responds to protection more quickly than the gray squirrel. In two years' time, wild specimens that are set free in city parks learn that they are safe from harm and become almost fearless. They take food from the hands of visitors, and climb into their arms. One of the most pleasing sights of the Zoological Park is the enjoyment of visitors, young and old, in "petting" our wild gray squirrels.

We ask the Boy Scouts of America to bring back this animal to each state where it belongs, by securing for it from legislatures and governors the perpetual closed seasons that it imperatively needs. It is not much to ask. This can be done by writing to members of the legislatures and requesting a suitable law. Such a request will be both right and reasonable; and three states have already granted it.

The gray squirrel is naturally the children's closest wild-animal friend. Surely every farmer boy would like to have colonies of gray squirrels around him, to keep him company, and furnish him with entertainment. A wood-lot without squirrels and chipmunks is indeed a lifeless place. For $20 anyone can restock any bit of woods with the most companionable and most beautiful tree-dweller that nature has given us.

The question now is, which will you choose—a gray squirrel colony to every farm, or lifeless desolation?

We ask every American to lend a hand to save Silver-Tail.

When we pause and consider the years, the generations and the ages that Nature spends in the production of a high vertebrate species, the preservation of such species from extermination should seriously concern us. As a matter of fact, in modern man's wild chase after wealth and pleasure, it is only one person out of every ten thousand who pauses to regard such causes, unless cornered by some protectionist fanatic, held fast and coerced to listen.

We are not discussing the animals of the Pleistocene, or the Eocene, or any period of the far-distant Past. We are dealing with species that have been ruthlessly, needlessly and wickedly destroyed by man during our own times; species that, had they been given a fair chance, would be alive and well to-day.

In reckless waste of blood and treasure, the nineteenth century has much for which to answer. Wars and pillage, fires, earthquakes and volcanoes are unhappily unavoidable. Like the poor of holy writ, we have them with us always. But the destruction of animal life is in a totally different category from the accidental calamities of life. It is deliberate, cold-blooded, persistent, and in its final stage, criminal! Worst of all, there is no limit to the devilish persistence of the confirmed destroyer, this side of the total extinction of species. No polar night is too cold, no desert inferno is too hot for the man who pursues wild life for commercial purposes. The rhytina has been exterminated in the far north, the elephant seals on Kerguelen are being exterminated in the far south, and midway, in the desert mountains of Lower California a fine species of mountain sheep is rapidly being shot into oblivion.

The Arizona Elk, (Cervus merriami). —Right at our very door, under our very noses and as it were only yesterday, a well-defined species of American elk has been totally exterminated. Until recently the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico were inhabited by a light-colored elk of smaller size than the Wyoming species, whose antlers possessed on each side only one brow tine instead of two. The exact history of the blotting out of that species has not yet been written, but it seems that its final extinction occurred about 1901. Its extermination was only a routine incident of the devilish general slaughter of American big game that by 1900 had wiped out nearly everything killable over a large portion of the Rocky Mountain region and the Great Plains.

The Arizona elk was exterminated before the separate standing of the species had been discovered by naturalists, and before even one skin had been preserved in a museum! In 1902 Mr. E.W. Nelson described the species from two male skulls, all the material of which he knew. Since that time, a third male skull, bearing an excellent pair of antlers, has been discovered by Mr. Ferdinand Kaegebehn, a member of the New York Zoological Society, and presented to our National Collection of Heads and Horns. It came from the Santa Catalina Mountains, Arizona, in 1884. The species was first exterminated in the central and northern mountains of Arizona, probably twenty years ago, and made its last stand in northwestern New Mexico. Precisely when it became extinct there, its last abiding place, we do not know, but in time the facts may appear.

The Quagga, (Equus quagga). —Before the days of Livingstone, Gordon-Cumming and Anderson, the grassy plains and half-forested hills of South Africa were inhabited by great herds of a wild equine species that in its markings was a sort of connecting link between the striped zebras and the stripeless wild asses. The quagga resembled a wild ass with a few zebra stripes around its neck, and no stripes elsewhere.

There is no good reason why a mammal that is not in any one of the families regularly eaten by man should be classed as a game animal. White men, outside of the western border of the continent of Europe, do not eat horses; and by this token there is no reason why a zebra should be shot as a "game" animal, any more than a baboon. A big male baboon is dangerous; a male zebra is not.

Nevertheless, white men have elected to shoot zebras as game; and under this curse the unfortunate quagga fell to rise no more. The species was shot to a speedy death by sportsmen, and by the British and Dutch farmers of South Africa. It became extinct about 1875, and to-day there are only 18 specimens in all the museums of the world.

The Blaubok, (Hippotragus leucophaeus). —The first of the African antelopes to become extinct in modern times was a species of large size, closely related to the roan antelope of to-day, and named by the early Dutch settlers of Cape Colony the blaubok, which means "blue-buck." It was snuffed out of existence in the year 1800, so quickly and so thoroughly that, like the Arizona elk, it very nearly escaped the annals of natural history. According to the careful investigations of Mr. Graham Renshaw, there are only eight specimens in existence in all the museums of Europe. In general terms it may be stated that this species has been extinct for about a century.

David's Deer (Elaphurus davidianus). —We enter this species with those that are totally extinct, because this is true of it so far as its wild state is concerned. It is a deer nearly as large as the red deer of Europe, with 3-tined antlers about equal in total length to those of the red deer. Its most striking differential character is its long tail, a feature that among the deer of the world is quite unique.

Originally this species inhabited "northern Mongolia" (China), but in a wild state it became extinct before its zoological standing became known to the scientific world. The species was called to the attention of zoologists by a Roman Catholic missionary, called Father David, and when finally described it was named in his honor.

At the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion, in 1900, there were about 200 specimens living in the imperial park of China, a short distance south of Pekin; but during the rebellion, all of them were killed and eaten, thus totally exterminating the species from Asia.

Fortunately, previous to that calamity (in 1894), the Duke of Bedford had by considerable effort and expenditure procured and established in his matchless park surrounding Woburn Abbey, England, a herd of eighteen specimens of this rarest of all deer. That nucleus has thriven and increased, until in 1910 it contained thirty-four head. Owing to the fact that all the living female specimens of this remarkable species are concentrated in one spot, and perfectly liable to be wiped out in one year by riot, war or disease, there is some cause for anxiety. The writer has gone so far as to suggest the desirability of starting a new herd of David's deer, at some point far distant from England, as an insurance measure against the possibility of calamity at Woburn. Excepting two or three specimens in European zoological gardens that have been favored by the Duke of Bedford, there are no living specimens outside of Woburn Park.

SKELETON OF A RHYTINA, OR ARCTIC SEA-COW

In the United States National Museum

The Rhytina, (Rhytina gigas). —The most northerly Sirenian that (so far as we know) ever inhabited the earth, lived on the Commander Islands in the northern end of Behring Sea, and was exterminated by man, for its oil and its flesh, about 1768. It was first made known to the world by Steller, in 1741, and must have become extinct near the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The rhytina belonged to the same mammalian Order as the manatee of Florida and South America, and the dugong of Australia. The largest manatee that Florida has produced, so far as we know, was thirteen feet long. The rhytina attained a length of between thirty and thirty-five feet, and a weight of 6,000 pounds or over. The flesh of this animal, like that of the manatee and dugong, must have been edible, and surely was prized by the hungry sailors and natives of its time. It is not [Page 37] strange that such a species was quickly exterminated by man, in the arctic regions. The wonder is that it ever existed at a latitude so outrageous for a Sirenian, an animal which by all precedents should prefer life in temperate or warm waters.

BURCHELL'S ZEBRA, IN THE U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM

Now Believed to be Totally Extinct

Burchell's Zebra, (Equus burchelli typicus). —The foundation type of what now is the Burchell group of zebras, consisting of four or five sub-species of the original species of burchelli, is an animal abundantly striped as to its body, neck and head, but with legs that are almost white and free from stripes. The sub-species have legs that are striped about half as much as the mountain zebra and the Grevy species.

While there are Chapman zebras and Grant zebras in plenty, and of Crawshay's not a few, all these are forms that have developed northward of the range of the parent species, the original Equus burchelli. For half a century in South Africa the latter had been harried and driven and shot, and now it is gone, forever. Now, the museum people of the world are hungrily enumerating their mounted specimens, and live ones cannot be procured with money, because there are none! Already it is common talk that "the true Burchell zebra is extinct;" and unfortunately there is no good reason to doubt it. Even if there are a few now living [Page 38] in some remote nook of the Transvaal, or Zululand, or Portuguese East Africa, the chances are as 100 to 1 that they will not be suffered to bring back the species; and so, to Burchell's zebra, the world is to-day saying "Farewell!"

THYLACINE OR TASMANIAN WOLF

Now Being Exterminated by the Sheep Owners of Tasmania

The Thylacine Or Tasmanian Wolf, (Thylacinus cynocephalus). — Four years ago, when Mr. W.H.D. Le Souef, Director of the Melbourne Zoological Garden (Australia), stood before the cage of the living thylacine in the New York Zoological Park, he first expressed surprise at the sight of the animal, then said:

"I advise you to take excellent care of that specimen; for when it is gone, you never will get another. The species soon will be extinct."

This opinion has been supported, quite independently, by a lady who is the highest authority on the present status of that species, Mrs. Mary G. Roberts, of Hobart, Tasmania. For nearly ten years Mrs. Roberts has been procuring all the living specimens of the thylacine that money could buy, and attempting to breed them at her private zoo. She states that the mountain home of this animal is now occupied by flocks of sheep, and because of the fact that the "Tasmanian wolves" raid the flocks and kill lambs, the sheep-owners and herders are systematically poisoning the thylacines as fast as possible. Inasmuch as the species is limited to [Page 39] Tasmania, Mrs. Roberts and others fear that the sheepmen will totally exterminate the remnant at an early date. This animal is the largest and also the most interesting carnivorous marsupial of Australia, and its untimely end will be a cause for sincere regret.

WEST INDIAN SEAL

In the New York Aquarium

The West Indian Seal, (Monachus tropicalis). —For at least fifty years, all the zoologists who ever had heard of this species believed that the oil-hunters had completely exterminated it. In 1885, when the National Museum came into possession of one poorly-mounted skin, from Professor Poey, of Havana, it was regarded as a great prize.

Most unexpectedly, in 1886 American zoologists were startled by the discovery of a small herd on the Triangle Islands, in the Caribbean Sea, near Yucatan, by Mr. Henry L. Ward, now director of the Milwaukee Public Museum, and Professor Ferrari, of the National Museum of Mexico. They found about twenty specimens, and collected only a sufficient number to establish the true character of the species.

Since that time, four living specimens have been captured, and sent to the New York Aquarium, where they lived for satisfactory periods. The indoor life and atmosphere did not seem to injure the natural vitality of the animals. In fact, I think they were far more lively in the Aquarium than were the sluggish creatures that Mr. Ward saw on the Triangle reefs, and described in his report of the expedition.

It is quite possible that there are yet alive a few specimens of this odd species; but the Damocletian sword of destruction hangs over them suspended by a fine hair, and it is to be expected that in the future [Page 40] some roving sea adventurer will pounce upon the Remnant, and wipe it out of existence for whatever reason may to him seem good.

CALIFORNIA ELEPHANT SEAL

Photographed on Guadalupe Island by C.H. Townsend.

The California Elephant Seal, (Mirounga angustirostris). —This remarkable long-snouted species of seal was reluctantly stricken from the fauna of the United States several years ago, and for at least fifteen years it has been regarded as totally extinct. Last year, however (1911), the Albatross scientific expedition, under the control of Director C.H. Townsend of the New York Aquarium, visited Guadalupe Island, 175 miles off the Pacific coast of Lower California and there found about 150 living elephant seals. They took six living specimens, all of which died after a few months in captivity. Ever since that time, first one person and then another comes to the front with a cheerful proposition to go to those islands and "clean up" all the remainder of those wonderful seals. One hunting party could land on Guadalupe, and in one week totally destroy the last remnant of this almost extinct species. To-day the only question is, Who will be mean enough to do it?

Fortunately, those seals have no commercial value whatsoever. The little oil they would yield would not pay the wages of cook's mate. The proven impossibility of keeping specimens alive in captivity, even for one year, and the absence of cash value in the skins, even for museum purposes, has left nothing of value in the animals to justify an expedition to kill or to capture them. No zoological garden or park desires any of them, at any price. Adult males attain a length of sixteen feet, and females eleven feet. Formerly this species was abundant in San Christobal Bay, Lower California.

At present, Mexico is in no frame of mind to provide real protection to a small colony of seals of no commercial value, 175 miles from her mainland, on an uninhabited island. It is wildly improbable that those seals will be permitted to live. It is a safe prediction that our next news of the elephant seals of Guadalupe will tell of the total extinction of those last 140 survivors of the species.

The California Grizzly Bear, (Ursus horribilis californicus). —No one protects grizzly bears, except in the Yellowstone Park and other game preserves. For obvious reasons, it is impossible to say whether any individuals of this huge species now remain alive, or how long it will be until the last one falls before a .405 Winchester engine of extermination. We know that a living specimen can not be procured with money, and we believe that "Old Monarch" now in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, is the last specimen of his species that ever will be exhibited alive.

I can think of no reason, save general Californian apathy, why the extinction of this huge and remarkable animal was not prevented by law. The sunset grizzly (on a railroad track) is the advertising emblem of the Golden State, and surely the state should take sufficient interest in the species to prevent its total extermination.

But it will not. California is hell-bent on exterminating a long list of her wild-life species, and it is very doubtful whether the masses can be reached and aroused in time to stop it. Name some of the species? Certainly; with all the pleasure in life: The band-tailed pigeon, the white-tailed kite, the sharp-tailed grouse, the sage grouse, the mountain sheep, prong-horned antelope, California mule deer, and ducks and geese too numerous to mention.

Early in 1912 I addressed to about 250 persons throughout the United States, three questions, as follows:

1. What species of birds have become totally extinct in your state?
2. What species of birds and mammals are threatened with early extinction?
3. What species of mammals have been exterminated throughout your state?

These queries were addressed to persons whose tastes and observations rendered them especially qualified to furnish the information desired. The interest shown in the inquiry was highly gratifying. The best of the information given is summarized below; but this tabulation also includes much information acquired from other sources. The general summary of the subject will, I am sure, convince all thoughtful persons that the present condition of the best wild life of the nation is indeed very grave. This list is not submitted as representing prolonged research or absolute perfection, but it is sufficient to point forty-eight morals.

The second question submitted in my inquiry produced results even more startling than the first. None of the persons reporting can be regarded as alarmists, but some of the lists of species approaching extinction are appallingly long. To their observations I add other notes and observations of interest at this time.

In closing the notes of this survey, I repeat my assurance that they are not offered on a basis of infallibility. It would require years of work to obtain answers from forty-eight states to the three questions that I have asked that could be offered as absolutely exact. All these reports are submitted on the well-recognized court-testimony basis,—"to the best of our knowledge and belief." Gathered as they have been from persons whose knowledge is good, these opinions are therefore valuable; and they furnish excellent indices of wild-life conditions as they exist in 1912 in the various states and provinces of North America north of Mexico.

In order to cure any disease, the surgeon must make of it a correct diagnosis. It is useless to try to prescribe remedies without a thorough understanding of the trouble.

That the best and most interesting wild life of America is disappearing at a rapid rate, we all know only too well. That proposition is entirely beyond the domain of argument. The fact that a species or a group of species has made a little gain here and there, or is stationary, does not sensibly diminish the force of the descending blow. The wild-life situation is full of surprises. For example, in 1902 I was astounded by the extent to which bird life had decreased over the 130 miles between Miles City, Montana, and the Missouri River since 1886; for there was no reason to expect anything of the kind. Even the jack rabbits and coyotes had almost totally disappeared.

The duties of the present hour, that fairly thrust themselves into our faces and will not be put aside, are these:

First,—To save valuable species from extermination!

Second,—To preserve a satisfactory representation of our once rich fauna, to hand down to Posterity.

Third,—To protect the farmer and fruit grower from the enormous losses that the destruction of our insectivorous and rodent-eating birds is now inflicting upon both the producer and consumer.

Fourth,—To protect our forests, by protecting the birds that keep down the myriads of insects that are destructive to trees and shrubs.

Fifth,—To preserve to the future sportsmen of America enough game and fish that they may have at least a taste of the legitimate pursuit of game in the open that has made life so interesting to the sportsmen of to-day.

For any civilized nation to exterminate valuable and interesting species of wild mammals, birds or fishes is more than a disgrace. It is a crime! We have no right, legal, moral or commercial, to exterminate any valuable or interesting species; because none of them belong to us, to exterminate or not, as we please.

For the people of any civilized nation to permit the slaughter of the wild birds that protect its crops, its fruits and its forests from the insect hordes, is worse than folly. It is sheer orneryness and idiocy. People who are either so lazy or asinine as to permit the slaughter of their best [Page 54] friends deserve to have their crops destroyed and their forests ravaged. They deserve to pay twenty cents a pound for their cotton when the boll weevil has cut down the normal supply.

It is very desirable that we should now take an inventory of the forces that have been, and to-day are, active in the destruction of our wild birds, mammals, and game fishes. During the past ten years a sufficient quantity of facts and figures has become available to enable us to secure a reasonably full and accurate view of the whole situation. As we pause on our hill-top, and survey the field of carnage, we find that we are reviewing the Army of Destruction!

It is indeed a motley array. We see true sportsmen beside ordinary gunners, game-hogs and meat hunters; handsome setter dogs are mixed up with coyotes, cats, foxes and skunks; and well-gowned women and ladies' maids are jostled by half-naked "poor-white" and black-negro "plume hunters."

Verily, the destruction of wild life makes strange companions.

Let us briefly review the several army corps that together make up the army of the destroyers. Space in this volume forbids an extended notice of each. Unfortunately it is impossible to segregate some of these classes, and number each one, for they merge together too closely for that; but we can at least describe the several classes that form the great mass of destroyers.

The Gentlemen Sportsmen. —These men are the very bone and sinew of wild life preservation. These are the men who have red blood in their veins, who annually hear the red gods calling, who love the earth, the mountains, the woods, the waters and the sky. These are the men to whom "the bag" is a matter of small importance, and to whom "the bag-limit" has only academic interest; because in nine cases out of ten they do not care to kill all that the law allows. The tenth and exceptional time is when the bag limit is "one." A gentleman sportsman is a man who protects game, stops shooting when he has "enough"—without reference to the legal bag-limit, and whenever a species is threatened with extinction, he conscientiously refrains from shooting it.

The true sportsmen of the world are the men who once were keen in the stubble or on the trail, but who have been halted by the general slaughter and the awful decrease of game. Many of them, long before a hair has turned gray, have hung up their guns forever, and turned to the camera. These are the men who are willing to hand out checks, or to leave their mirth and their employment and go to the firing line at their state capitols, to lock horns with the bull-headed killers of wild life who recognize no check or limit save the law.

These are the men who have done the most to put upon our statute books the laws that thus far have saved some of our American game from total annihilation, and who (so we firmly believe) will be chiefly instrumental in tightening the lines of protection around the remnant. These are the men who are making and stocking game preserves, public and private, great and small.

Drawn by Dan Beard

THE REGULAR ARMY OF DESTRUCTION, WAITING FOR THE FIRST OF OCTOBER

Each Year 2,642,274 Well-Armed Men Take the Field Against the Remnant of Wild Birds and Mammals In the United States

If you wish to know some of these men, I will tell you where to find a goodly number of them; and when you find them, you will also find that they are men you would enjoy camping with! Look in the membership lists of the Boone and Crockett Club, Camp-Fire Club of America, the Lewis and Clark Club of Pittsburgh, the New York State League, the Shikar Club of London, the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the British Empire, the Massachusetts Fish and Game Protective Association, the Springfield (Mass.) Sportsmen's Association, the Camp-Fire Clubs of Detroit and Chicago, and the North American Fish and Game Protective Association.

There are other bodies of sportsmen that I would like to name, were space available, but to set down here a complete list is quite impossible.

The best and the most of the game-protective laws now in force in the United States and Canada were brought into existence through the initiative and efforts of the real sportsmen of those two nations. But for their activity, exerted on the right side, the settled portion of North America would to-day be an utterly gameless land! Even though the sportsmen have taken their toll of the wilds, they have made the laws that have saved a remnant of the game until 1912.

For all that, however, every man who still shoots game is a soldier in the Army of Destruction! There is no blinking that fact. Such men do not stand on the summit with the men who now protect the game and do not shoot at all! The millions of men who do not shoot, and who also do nothing to protect or preserve wild life, do not count! In this warfare they are merely ciphers in front of the real figures.

The Gunners, Who Kill To The Limit. —Out of the enormous mass of men who annually take up arms against the remnant of wild life, and are called "sportsmen," I believe that only one out of every 500 conscientiously stops shooting when game becomes scarce, and extinction is impending. All of the others feel that it is right and proper to kill all the game that they can kill up to the legal bag limit. It is the reasoning of Shylock:

"Justice demands it, and the law doth give it!"

Especially is this true of the men who pay their one dollar per year for a resident hunting license, and feel that in doing so they have done a great Big Thing!

This is a very deadly frame of mind. Ethically it is entirely wrong; and at least two million men and boys who shoot American game must be shown that it is wrong! This is the spirit of Extermination, clothed in the robes of Law and Justice.

Whenever and wherever game birds are so scarce that a good shot who hunts hard during a day in the fields finds only three or four birds, he should stop shooting at once, and devote his mind and energies to the problem of bringing back the game! It is strange that conditions do not make this duty clear to every conscientious citizen.

The Shylock spirit which prompts a man to kill all that "the law allows" is a terrible scourge to the wild life of America, and to the world at [Page 57] large. It is the spirit of extermination according to law. Even the killing of game for the market is not so great a scourge as this; for this spirit searches out the game in every nook and cranny of the world, and spares not. In effect it says: "If the law is defective, it is right for me to take every advantage of it! I do not need to have any conscience in the matter outside the letter of the law."

The extent to which this amazing spirit prevails is positively awful. You will find it among pseudo game-protectors to a paralyzing extent! It is the great gunner's paradox, and it pervades this country from corner to corner. No: there is no use in trying to "educate" the mass of the hunters of America out of it, as a means of saving the game; for positively it can not be done! Do not waste time in trying it. If you rely upon it, you will be doing a great wrong to wild life, and promoting extermination. The only remedy is sweeping laws, for long close seasons, for a great many species. Forget the paltry dollar-a-year license money. The license fees never represent more than a tenth part of the value of the game that is killed under licenses.

The savage desire to kill "all that the law allows" often is manifested in men in whom we naturally expect to find a very different spirit. By way of illumination, I offer three cases out of the many that I could state.

Case No. 1. The Duck Breeder. —A gentleman of my acquaintance has spent several years and much money in breeding wild ducks. From my relations with him, I had acquired the belief that he was a great lover of ducks, and at least wished all species well. One whizzing cold day in winter he called upon me, and stated that he had been duck-hunting; which surprised me. He added, "I have just spent two days on Great South Bay, and I made a great killing. In the two days I got ninety-four ducks!"

I said, "How could you do it,—caring for wild ducks as you do?"

"Well, I had hunted ducks twice before on Great South Bay and didn't have very good luck; but this time the cold weather drove the ducks in, and I got square with them!"

Case No. 2. The Ornithologist. —A short time ago the news was published in Forest and Stream, that a well-known ornithologist had distinguished himself in one of the mid-western states by the skill he had displayed in bagging thirty-four ducks in one day, greatly to the envy of the natives; and if this shoe fits any American naturalist, he is welcome to put it on and wear it.

Case No. 3. The Sportsman. —A friend of mine in the South is the owner of a game preserve in which wild ducks are at times very numerous. Once upon a time he was visited by a northern sportsmen who takes a deep and abiding interest in the preservation of game. The sportsman was invited to go out duck-shooting; ducks being then in season there. He said:

G. O. SHIELDS A notable defender of Wild Life

"Yes, I will go; and I want you to put me in a place where I can kill a hundred ducks in a day! I never have done that yet, and I would like to do it, once!"

"All right," said my friend, "I can put you in such a place; and if you can shoot well enough, you can kill a hundred ducks in a day."

The effort was made in all earnestness. There was much shooting, but few were the ducks that fell before it. In concluding this story my friend remarked in a tone of disgust:

"All the game-preserving sportsmen that come to me are just like that! They want to kill all they can kill!"

There is a blood-test by which to separate the conscientious sportsmen from the mere gunners. Here it is:

A sportsman stops shooting when game becomes scarce; and he does not object to long-close-season laws; but

A gunner believes in killing "all that the law allows;" and he objects to long close seasons!

I warrant that whenever and wherever this test is applied it will separate the sheep from the goats. It applies in all America, all Asia and Africa, and in Greenland, with equal force.

The Game-Hog. —This term was coined by G.O. Shields, in 1897, when he was editor and owner of Recreation Magazine, and it has come into general use. It has been recognized by a judge on the bench as being an appropriate term to apply to all men who selfishly slaughter wild game beyond the limits of decency. Although it is a harsh term, and was mercilessly used by Mr. Shields in his fierce war on the men who slaughtered game for "sport," it has jarred at least a hundred thousand men into their first realization of the fact that to-day there is a difference between decency and indecency in the pursuit of game. The use of the term has done very great good; but, strange to say, it has made for Mr. Shields a great many enemies outside the ranks of the game-hogs themselves! From this one might fairly suppose that there is such a thing as a sympathetic game-hog!

One thing at least is certain. During a period of about six years, while his war with the game-hogs was on, from Maine to California, Mr. Shields's name became a genuine terror to excessive killers of game; and it is reasonably certain that his war saved a great number of game birds from the slaughter that otherwise would have overtaken them!

The number of armed men and boys who annually take the field in the United States in the pursuit of birds and quadrupeds, is enormous. [Page 59] People who do not shoot have no conception of it; and neither do they comprehend the mechanical perfection and fearful deadliness of the weapons used. This feature of the situation can hardly be realized until some aspect of it is actually seen.

I have been at some pains to collect the latest figures showing the number of hunting licenses issued in 1911, but the total is incomplete. In some states the figures are not obtainable, and in some states there are no hunters' license laws. The figures of hunting licenses issued in 1911 that I have obtained from official sources are set forth below.

The average for the twenty-seven states that issued licenses as shown above is 55,046 for each state.

Now, the twenty-one states issuing no licenses, or not reporting, produced in 1911 fully as many gunners per capita as did the other twenty-seven states. Computed fairly on existing averages they must have turned out a total of 1,155,966 gunners, making for all the United States 2,642,194 armed men and boys warring upon the remnant of game in 1911. We are not counting the large number of lawless hunters who never take out licenses. Now, is Mr. Beard's picture a truthful presentation, or not?

New York with only deer, ruffed grouse, shore-birds, ducks and a very few woodcock to shoot annually puts into the field 150,222 armed men. In 1909 they killed about 9,000 deer!

New Jersey, spending $30,000 in 1912 in efforts to restock her covers with game, and with a population of 2,537,167, sent out in 1911 a total army of 61,920 well-armed gunners. How can any of her game survive?

New Hampshire, with only 430,572 population, has 33,542 licensed hunters,—equal to thirty-three regiments of full strength!

Vermont, with 355,956 people, sends out annually an army of 31,762 men who hunt according to law; and in 1910 they killed 3,649 deer.

Utah, with only 373,351 population, had 27,800 men in the field after her very small remnant of game! How can any wild thing of Utah escape?

Montana, population 376,053, had in 1911 an army of 59,291 well-armed men, warring chiefly upon the big game, and swiftly exterminating it.

How long can any of the big game stand before the army of two and one-half million well-armed men, eager and keen to kill, and out to get an equivalent for their annual expenditure in guns, ammunition and other expenses?

In addition to the hunters themselves, they are assisted by thousands of expert guides, thousands of horses, thousands of dogs, hundreds of automobiles and hundreds of thousands of tents. Each big-game hunter has an experienced guide who knows the haunts and habits of the game, the best feeding grounds, the best trails, and everything else that will aid the hunter in taking the game at a disadvantage and destroying it. The big-game rifles are of the highest power, the longest range, the greatest accuracy and the best repeating mechanism that modern inventive genius can produce. It is said that in Wyoming the Maxim silencer is now being used. England has produced a weapon of a new type, called "the scatter rifle," which is intended for use on ducks. The best binoculars are used in searching out the game, and horses carry the hunters and guides as near as possible to the game. For bears, baits are freely used, and in the pursuit of pumas, dogs are employed to the limit of the available supply.

The deadliness of the automobile in hunting already is so apparent that North Dakota has wisely and justly forbidden their use by law, (1911). The swift machine enables city gunmen to penetrate game regions they could not reach with horses, and hunt through from four to six localities per day, instead of one only, as formerly. The use of automobiles in hunting should be everywhere prohibited.

Every appliance and assistance that money can buy, the modern sportsman secures to help him against the game. The game is beset during its breeding season by various wild enemies,—foxes, cats, wolves, pumas, lynxes, eagles, and many other predatory species. The only help that it receives is in the form of an annual close season—which thus far has saved in America only a few local moose, white-tailed deer and a few game birds, from steady and sure extermination.

The bag limits on which vast reliance is placed to preserve the wild game, are a fraud, a delusion and a snare! The few local exceptions only prove the generality of the rule. In every state, without one single exception, the bag limits are far too high, and the laws are of deadly liberality. In many states, the bag limit laws on birds are an absolute dead letter. Fancy the 125 wardens of New York enforcing the bag-limit laws on 150,000 gunners! It is this horrible condition that is enabling the licensed army of destruction to get in its deadly work on the game, all over the world. In America, the over-liberality of the laws are to blame for two-thirds of the carnival of slaughter, and the successful evasions of the law are responsible for the other third.

TWO GUNNERS OF KANSAS CITY

Who Believe in Killing all That the Law Allows. They are not so Much to Blame as the System That Permits Such Slaughter. (Note the Pump Guns)

WHY THE SANDHILL CRANE IS BECOMING EXTINCT

Nineteen of Them Killed as "Game" by Three Gunners. Note the Machine Gun.

The only remedy for the present extermination of game according to law that so rapidly and so furiously is proceeding all over the United States, Canada, Alaska, and Africa, is ten-year close seasons on all the species threatened with extinction, and immensely reduced open seasons and bag limits on all the others.

Will the people who still have wild game take heed now, and clamp down the brakes, hard and fast before it is too late, or will they have their game exterminated?

Shall we have five-year close seasons, or close seasons of 500 years? We must take our choice.

Shall we hand down to our children a gameless continent, with all the shame that such a calamity will entail?

We have got to answer these questions like men, or they will soon be answered for us by the extermination of the wild life. For twenty-five years we have been smarting under the disgrace of the extermination of our bison millions. Let us not repeat the dose through the destruction of other species.

We have now to deal with The Guerrillas Of Destruction.

In warfare, a guerrilla, or bushwhacker, is an armed man who recognizes none of the rules of civilized warfare, and very often has no commander. In France he is called a "franc-tireur," or free-shooter. The guerrilla goes out to live on the country, to skulk, to war on the weak, and never attack save from ambush, or when the odds clearly are on his side. His military status is barely one remove from that of the spy.

The meat-shooters who harry the game and other wild life in order to use it as a staple food supply; the Italians, negroes and others who shoot song-birds as food; the plume-hunters and the hide-and-tusk hunters all over the world are the guerrillas of the Army of Destruction. Let us consider some of these grand divisions in detail.

Here is an inexorable law of Nature, to which there are no exceptions:

No wild species of bird, mammal, reptile or fish can withstand exploitation for commercial purposes.

The men who pursue wild creatures for the money or other value there is in them, never give up. They work at slaughter when other men are enjoying life, or are asleep. If they are persistent, no species on which they fix the Evil Eye escapes extermination at their hands.

Does anyone question this statement? If so let him turn backward and look at the lists of dead and dying species.

The Division Of Meat-Shooters contains all men who sordidly shoot for the frying-pan,—to save bacon and beef at the expense of the public, or for the markets. There are a few wilderness regions so remote and so difficult of access that the transportation of meat into them is a matter of much difficulty and expense. There are a very few men in North America who are justified in "living off the country," for short periods. The genuine prospectors always have been counted in this class; but all miners who are fully located, all lumbermen and railway-builders certainly are not in the prospector's class. They are abundantly able to maintain continuous lines of communication for the transit of beef and mutton.

Of all the meat-shooters, the market-gunners who prey on wild fowl and ground game birds for the big-city markets are the most deadly to wild life. Enough geese, ducks, brant, quail, ruffed grouse, prairie chickens, heath hens and wild pigeons have been butchered by gunners and netters for "the market" to have stocked the whole world. No section [Page 64] containing a good supply of game has escaped. In the United States the great slaughtering-grounds have been Cape Cod; Great South Bay, New York; Currituck Sound, North Carolina; Marsh Island, Louisiana; the southwest corner of Louisiana; the Sunk Lands of Arkansas; the lake regions of Minnesota; the prairies of the whole middle West; Great Salt Lake; the Klamath Lake region (Oregon) and southern California.

A MARKET GUNNER AT WORK ON MARSH ISLAND

Killing Mallards for the New Orleans Market. The Purchase of This Island by Mrs. Russell Sage has now Converted it Into a Bird Sanctuary

The output of this systematic bird slaughter has supplied the greedy game markets of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. The history of this industry, its methods, its carnage, its profits and its losses would make a volume, but we can not enter upon it here. Beyond reasonable doubt, this awful traffic in dead game is responsible for at least three-fourths of the slaughter that has reduced our game birds to a mere remnant of their former abundance. There is no influence so deadly to wild life as that of the market gunner who works six days a week, from sunrise until sunset, hunting down and killing every game bird that he can reach with a choke-bore gun.

During the past five years, several of the once-great killing grounds have been so thoroughly "shot out" that they have ceased to hold their former rank. This is the case with the Minnesota Lakes, the Sunk Lands of Arkansas, the Klamath Lakes of Oregon, and I think it is also true of southern California. The Klamath Lakes have been taken over by the Government as a bird refuge. Currituck Sound, at the northeastern corner of North Carolina, has been so bottled up by the Bayne law of New York [Page 65] State that Currituck's greatest market has been cut off. Last year only one-half the usual number of ducks and geese were killed; and already many "professional" duck and brant shooters have abandoned the business because the commission merchants no longer will buy dead birds.

RUFFED GROUSE A Common Victim of Illegal Slaughter

Very many enormous bags of game have been made in a day by market gunners: but rarely have they published any of their records. The greatest kill of which I ever have heard occurred under the auspices of the Glenn County Club, in southern California, on February 5, 1906. Two men, armed with automatic shot-guns, fired five shots apiece, and got ten geese out of one flock. In one hour they killed two hundred and eighteen geese, and their bag for the day was four hundred and fifty geese! The shooter who wrote the story for publication (on February 12, at Willows, Glenn County, California) said: "It being warm weather, the birds had to be shipped at once in order to keep them from spoiling." A photograph was made of the "one hour's slaughter" of two hundred and eighteen geese, and it was published in a western magazine with "C.H.B.'s" story, nearly all of which will be found in Chapter XV.

The reasons why market shooting is so deadly destructive to wild life are not obscure.

The true sportsman hunts during a very few days only each year. The market gunners shoot early and late, six days a week, month after month. When game is abundant, the price is low, and a great quantity must be killed in order to make it pay well. When game is scarce, the market prices are high, and the shooter makes the utmost exertions to find the last of the game in order to secure the "big money."

When game is protected by law, thousands of people with money desire it for their tables, just the same, and are willing to pay fabulous prices for what they want, when they want it. Many a dealer is quite willing to run the risk of fines, because fines don't really hurt; they are only annoying. The dealer wishes to make the big profit, and retain his customers; "and besides," he reasons, "if I don't supply him some one else will; so what is the difference?"

When game is scarce, prices high and the consumer's money ready, there are a hundred tricks to which shooters and dealers willingly resort to ship and receive unlawful game without detection. It takes the very [Page 66] best kind of game wardens,—genuine detectives, in fact,—to ferret out these cunning illegal practices, and catch lawbreakers "with the goods on them," so that they can be punished. Mind you, convictions can not be secured at both ends of the line save by the most extraordinary good fortune, and usually the shooter and shipper escape, even when the dealer is apprehended and fined.

From "Rod and Gun in Canada"

A PERFECTLY LAWFUL BAG OF 58 RUFFED GROUSE FOR TWO MEN

Here are some of the methods that have been practiced in the past in getting illegal game into the New York market:

Ruffed grouse and quail have both been shipped in butter firkins, marked "butter"; and latterly, butter has actually been packed solidly on top of the birds.

Ruffed grouse and quail very often have been shipped in egg crates, marked "eggs." They have been shipped in trunks and suit cases,—a very [Page 67] common method for illegal game birds, all over the United States. In Oklahoma when a man refuses to open his trunk for a game warden, the warden joyously gets out his brace and bitt, and bores an inch hole into the lower story of the trunk. If dead birds are there, the tell-tale auger quickly reveals them.

Three years ago, I was told that certain milk-wagons on Long Island made daily collections of dead ducks intended for the New York market, and the drivers kindly shipped them by express from the end of the route.

Once upon a time, a New York man gave notice that on a certain date he would be in a certain town in St. Lawrence County, New York, with a palace horse-car, "to buy horses." Car and man appeared there as advertised. Very ostentatiously, he bought one horse, and had it taken aboard the car before the gaze of the admiring populace. At night, when the A.P. had gone to bed, many men appeared, and into the horseless end of that car, they loaded thousands of ruffed grouse. The game warden who described the incident to me said: "That man pulled out for New York with one horse and half a car load of ruffed grouse!"

Whenever a good market exists for the sale of game, as sure as the world that market will be supplied. Twenty-six states forbid by law the sale of their own "protected" game, but twenty of them do not expressly prohibit the sale of game stolen from neighboring states! That is a very, very weak point in the laws of all those states. A child can see how it works. Take Pittsburgh as a case in point.

In the winter and spring of 1912 the State Game Commission of Pennsylvania found that quail and ruffed grouse were being sold in Pittsburgh, in large quantities. The state laws were well enforced, and it was believed that the birds were not being killed in Pennsylvania. Some other state was being robbed!

The Game Commission went to work, and in a very short time certain game-dealers of Pittsburgh were arrested. At first they tried to bluff their way out of their difficulty, and even went as far as to bring charges against the game-warden whom the Commission had instructed to buy some of their illegal game, and pay for it. But the net of the law tightened upon them so quickly and so tightly that they threw up their hands and begged for mercy.

SNOW BUNTING A Great "Game Bird"! Of These, 8,058 Were Found in 1902 in one New York Cold-Storage Warehouse

It was found that those Pittsburgh game-dealers were selling quail and grouse that had been stolen in thousands, from the state of Kentucky! Between the state game laws, working in lovely harmony with the Lacey federal law that prohibits the shipment of game illegally killed or sold, the whole bad business was laid bare, and signed confessions were promptly obtained from the shippers in Kentucky.

At that very time, a good bill for the better protection of her game was before the Kentucky legislature; and a certain member was vigorously opposing it, as he had successfully done in previous years. He was told that the state was being robbed, but refused to believe it. Then a signed confession was laid before him, bearing the name of the man who was instigating his opposition,—his friend,—who confessed that he had [Page 68] illegally bought and shipped to Pittsburgh over 5,000 birds. The objector literally threw up his hands, and said, "I have been wrong! Let the bill go through!" And it went.

Before the passage of the Bayne law, New York City was a "fence" for the sale of grouse illegally killed in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and I know not how many other states. The Bayne law stopped all that business, abruptly and forever; and if the ruffed grouse, quail and ducks of the Eastern States are offered for sale in Chicago, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Washington, the people of New York and Massachusetts can at least be assured that they are not to blame. Those two states now maintain no "fences" for the sale of game that has been stolen from other states. They have both set their houses in order, and set two examples for forty other states to follow.

The remedy for all this miserable game-stealing, law-breaking business is simple and easily obtained. Let each state of the United States and each province and Canada enact a Bayne law, absolutely prohibiting the sale of all wild native game, and the thing is done! But nothing short of that will be really effective. It will not do at all to let state laws rest with merely forbidding the sale of game "protected by the State;" for that law is full of loop-holes. It does much good service, yes; but what earthly objection can there be in any state to the enactment of a law that is sweepingly effective, and which can not be evaded, save through the criminal connivance of officers of the law?

By way of illustration, to show what the sale of wild game means to the remnant of our game, and the wicked slaughter of non-game birds to which it leads, consider these figures:

The fines for this lot, if imposed, would have amounted to $1,168,315.

Shortly after that seizure American quail became so scarce that in effect they totally disappeared from the banquet tables of New York. I can not recall having been served with one since 1903, but the little Egyptian quail can be legally imported and sold when officially tagged.

Few persons away from the firing line realize the far-reaching effects of the sale of wild game. Here are a few flashes from the searchlight:

At Hangkow, China, Mr. C. William Beebe found that during his visit in 1911, over 46,000 pheasants of various species were shipped from that port on one cold-storage steamer to the London market. And this when English pheasants were selling in the Covent Garden market at from two to three shillings each, for fresh birds!

In 1910, 1,200 ptarmigan from Norway, bound for the Chicago market, passed through the port of New York,—not by any means the first or the last shipment of the kind. The epicures of Chicago are being permitted to comb the game out of Norway.

In 1910, 70,000 dozen Egyptian quail were shipped to Europe from Alexandria, Egypt. Just why that species has not already been exterminated, is a zoological mystery; but extermination surely will come some day, and I think it will be in the near future.

The coast of China has been raked and scraped for wild ducks to ship to New York,—prior to the passage of the Bayne law! I have forgotten the figures that once were given me, but they were an astonishing number of thousands for the year.

The Division of Negroes and Poor Whites who kill song and other birds indiscriminately will be found in a separate chapter.

The Division Of "Resident" Game-Butchers. —This refers to the men who live in the haunts of big game, where wardens are the most of the time totally absent, and where bucks, does and fawns of hoofed big game may be killed in season and out of season, with impunity. It includes guides, ranchmen, sheep-herders, cowboys, miners, lumbermen and floaters generally. In times past, certain taxidermists of Montana promoted the slaughter of wild bison in the Yellowstone Park, and it was a pair of rascally taxidermists who killed, or caused to be killed in Lost Park, in 1897, the very last bison of Colorado.

It seems to be natural for the minds of men who live in America in the haunts of big game to drift into the idea that the wild game around them is all theirs. Very few of them recognize the fact that every other man, woman and child in a given state or province has vested rights in its wild game. It is natural for a frontiersman to feel that because he is in the wilds he has a God-given right to live off the country; but to-day that idea is totally wrong! If some way can not be found to curb that all-pervading propensity among our frontiersmen, then we may as well bid all our open-field big game a long farewell; for the deadly "residents" surely will exterminate it, outside the game preserves. The "residents" are, in my opinion, about ten times more destructive than the sportsmen. A sportsman in quest of large game is in the field only from ten to thirty [Page 70] days; all his movements are known, and all his trophies are seen and counted. His killing is limited by law, and upon him the law is actually enforced. Often a resident hunts the whole twelve months of the year,—for food, for amusement, and for trophies to sell. Rarely does a game warden reach his cabin; because the wardens are few, the distances great and the frontier cabins are widely scattered.

Mr. Carl Pickhardt told me of a guide in Newfoundland who had a shed in the woods hanging full of bodies of caribou, and who admitted to him that while the law allowed him five caribou each year, he killed each year about twenty-five.

Mr. J.M. Phillips knows of a mountain in British Columbia, once well stocked with goats, on which the goats have been completely exterminated by one man who lives within easy striking distance of them, and who finds goat meat to his liking.

I have been reliably informed that in 1911, at Haha Lake, near Grande Bay, Saguenay District, P.Q., one family of six persons killed thirty-four woodland caribou and six moose. This meant the waste of about 14,000 pounds of good meat, and the death of several female animals.

In 1886 I knew a man named Owens who lived on the head of Sunday Creek, Montana, who told me that in 1884-5 he killed thirty-five mule deer for himself and family. The family ate as much as possible, the dogs ate all they could, and in the spring the remainder spoiled. Now there is not a deer, an antelope, or a sage grouse within fifty miles of that lifeless waste.

Here is a Montana object lesson on the frame of mind of the "resident" hunter, copied from Outdoor Life Magazine (Denver) for February, 1912. It is from a letter to the Editor, written by C.B. Davis.

The Division Of Hired Laborers. —The scourge of lumber-camps in big-game territory, the mining camps and the railroad-builders is a long story, and if told in detail it would make several chapters. Their awful destructiveness is well known. It is a common thing for "the boss" to hire a hunter to kill big game to supply the hungry outfit, and save beef and pork.

The abuses arising from this source easily could be checked, and finally suppressed. A ten-line law would do the business,—forbidding any person employed in any camp of sheep men, cattle men, lumbermen, miners, railway laborers or excavators to own or use a rifle in hunting wild game; and forbidding any employer of labor to feed those laborers, or permit them to be fed, on the flesh of wild game mammals or birds. "Camp" laborers are not "pioneers;" not by a long shot! They are soldiers of Commerce, and makers of money.

A Mountain Sheep Case In Colorado. —The state of Colorado sincerely desires to protect and perpetuate its slender remnant of mountain sheep, but as usual the Lawless Miscreant is abroad to thwart the efforts of the guardians of the game. Every state that strives to protect its big game has such doings as this to contend with:

In the winter of 1911-12, a resident poacher brought into Grant, Colorado, a lot of mountain sheep meat for sale; and he actually sold it to residents of that town! The price was six cents per pound. A lot of it was purchased by the railway station-agent. I have no doubt that the same man who did that job, which was made possible only by the co-operation of the citizens of Grant, will try the same poaching-and-selling game next winter, unless the State Game Commissioner is able to bring him to book.

A Wyoming Case In Point. —As a fair sample of what game wardens, and the general public, are sometimes compelled to endure through the improper decisions of judges, I will cite this case:

In the Shoshone Mountains of northern Wyoming, about fifty miles or so from the town of Cody, in the winter of 1911-12 a man was engaged in trapping coyotes. It was currently reported that he had been "driven out of Montana and Idaho." He had scores of traps. He baited his traps with the flesh of deer, elk calves and grouse, all illegally killed and illegally used for that purpose. A man of my acquaintance saw some of this game meat actually used as described.

The man was a notorious character, and cruel in the extreme. Finally a [Page 72] game warden caught him red-handed, arrested him, and took him to Cody for trial. It happened that the judge on the bench had once trapped with him, and therefore "he set the game-killer free, while the game-warden was roasted."

That wolf-trapper once took into the mountains a horse, to kill and use as bear-bait. The animal was blind in one eye, and because it would not graze precisely where the wolfer desired it to remain, he deliberately destroyed the sight of its good eye, and left it for days, without the ability to find water.

Think of the fate of any wild animal that unkind Fate places at the mercy of such a man!

Quite unintentionally on his part, Man, the arch destroyer and the most predatory and merciless of all animal species except the wolves, has rendered a great service to all the birds that live or nest upon the ground. His relentless pursuit and destruction of the savage-tempered, strong-jawed fur-bearing animals is in part the salvation of the ground birds of to-day and yesterday. If the teeth and claws had been permitted to multiply unchecked down to the present time, with man's warfare on the upland game proceeding as it has done, scores upon scores of species long ere this would have been exterminated.

But the slaughter of the millions of North American foxes, wolves, weasels, skunks, and mink has so overwhelmingly reduced the four-footed enemies of the birds that the balance of wild Nature has been preserved. As a rule, the few predatory wild animals that remain are not slaughtering the birds to a serious extent; and for this we may well be thankful.

The Domestic Cat. —In such thickly settled communities as our northern states, from the Atlantic coast to the sandhills of Kansas and Nebraska, the domestic cat is probably the greatest four-footed scourge of bird life. Thousands of persons who never have seen a hunting cat in action will doubt this statement, but the proof of its truthfulness is only too painfully abundant.

Unhappily it is the way of the hunting cat to stalk unseen, and to kill the very birds that are most friendly with man, and most helpful to him in his farming and fruit-growing business. The quail is about the only game bird that the cat affects seriously, and to it the cat is very destructive. It is the robin, catbird, thrush, bluebird, dove, woodpecker, chickadee, phoebe, tanager and other birds of the lawn, the garden and orchard that afford good hunting for sly and savage old Thomas.

When I was a boy in my 'teens, I had a lasting series of object lessons on the cat as a predatory animal. Our "Betty" was the most ambitious and successful domestic-cat hunter of wild mammals of which I ever have heard. To her, rats and mice were mere child's-play, and after a time their pursuit offered such tame sport that she sought fresh fields for her prowess. Then she brought in young rabbits, chipmunks and thirteen-lined spermophiles, and once she came in, quite exhausted, half dragging and half carrying a big, fat pocket gopher. With her it seemed to be a point of honor that she should bring in her game and display it. Little did we realize then that in course of time the wild birds would [Page 74] become so scarce that their slaughter by house cats would demand legislative action in the states.

In considering the hunting cat, let us call in a credible witness of the effects of domestic cats on the bob white. The following is an eye-witness report, by Ernest B. Beardsley, in Outdoor Life for April, 1912. The locality was Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas.

In the New York Zoological Park, we have had troubles of our own with marauding cats. They establish themselves in a day, and quickly learn where to seek easy game and good cover. In the daytime they lie close in the thick brush, exactly as tigers do in India, but if not molested for a period of days, they become bold and attack game in open view. One bird-killing cat was so shy of man that it was only after two weeks of hard hunting (mornings and evenings) that it was killed.

We have seen cats catch and kill gray squirrels, chipmunks, robins and thrushes, and have found the feathers of slaughtered quail. Once we had gray rabbits breeding in the park, and their number reached between eighty and ninety. For a time they fearlessly hopped about in sight from our windows, and they were of great interest to visitors and to all of us. Then the cats began upon them; and in one year there was not a rabbit to be seen, save at rare intervals. At the same time the chipmunks of the park were almost exterminated.

That was the last straw, and we began a vigorous war upon those wild and predatory cats. The cats came off second best. We killed every cat that was found hunting in the park, and we certainly got some that were big [Page 75] and bad. We eliminated that pest, and we are keeping it eliminated. And with what result?

In 1911 a covey of eleven quail came and settled in our grounds, and have remained there. Twenty times at least during the past eight months (winter and spring) I have seen the flock on the granite ledge not more than forty feet from the rear window of my office. Last spring when I left the Administration Building at six o'clock, after the visitors had gone, I found two half-grown rabbits calmly roosting on the door-mat. The rabbits are slowly coming back, and the chipmunks are visibly increasing in number. The gray squirrels now chase over the walks without fear of any living thing, and our ducklings and young guineas and peacocks are safe once more.

That cats destroy annually in the United States several millions of very valuable birds, seems fairly beyond question. I believe that in settled regions they are worse than weasels, foxes, skunks and mink combined; because there are about one hundred times as many of them, and those that hunt are not afraid to hunt in the daytime. Of course I am not saying that all cats hunt wild game; but in the country I believe that fully one-half of them do.

I am personally acquainted with a cat in Indiana, on the farm of relatives, which is notorious for its hunting propensities, and its remarkable ability in capturing game. Even the lady who is joint owner of the cat feels very badly about its destructiveness, and has said, over and over again, that it ought to be killed; but the cat is such a family pet that no one in the family has the heart to destroy it, and as yet no stranger has come forward to play the part of executioner. The lady in question assured me that to her certain knowledge that particular cat would watch a nestful of young robins week after week until they had grown up to such a size that they were almost ready to fly; then he would kill them and devour them. Old "Tommy" was too wise to kill the robins when they were unduly small.

In a great book entitled Useful Birds and Their Protection, by E. H. Forbush, State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, and published by the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture in 1905, there appears, on page 362, many interesting facts on this subject. For example:

A HUNTING CAT AND ITS VICTIM This Cat had fed so bountifully on the Rabbits and Squirrels of the Zoological Park, that it ate only the Brain of this Gray Rabbit

In Mr. Forbush's book there is an illustration of the cat which killed fifty-eight birds in one year, and the animal was photographed with a dead robin in its mouth. The portrait is reproduced in this chapter.

Last year, a strong effort was made in Massachusetts to enact a law requiring cats to be licensed. On account of the amount of work necessary in passing the no-sale-of-game bill, that measure was not pressed, and so it did not become a law; but another year it will undoubtedly be passed, for it is a good bill, and extremely necessary at this time. Such a law is needed in every state!

There is a mark by which you may instantly and infallibly know the worst of the wild cats—by their presence away from home, hunting in the open. Kill all such, wherever found. The harmless cats are domestic in their tastes, and stay close to the family fireside and the kitchen. Being properly fed, they have no temptation to become hunters. There are cats and cats, just as there are men and men: some tolerable, many utterly intolerable. No sweeping sentiment for all cats should be allowed to stand in the way of the abatement of the hunting-cat nuisances.

Of all men, the farmer cannot afford the luxury of their existence! It is too expensive. With him it is a matter of dollars, and cash out of pocket for every hunting cat that he tolerates in his neighborhood. There are two places in which to strike the hunting cats: in the open, and in the state legislature.

While this chapter was in the hands of the compositors, the hunting cat and gray rabbit shown in the accompanying illustration were brought in by a keeper.

Dogs As Destroyers Of Birds. —I have received many letters from protectors of wild life informing me that the destruction of ground-nesting [Page 77] birds, and especially of upland game birds, by roaming dogs, has in some localities become a great curse to bird life. Complaints of this kind have come from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Usually the culprits are hunting dogs—setters, pointers and hounds.

Now, surely it is not necessary to set forth here any argument on this subject. It is not open to argument, or academic treatment of any kind. The cold fact is:

In the breeding season of birds, and while the young birds are incapable of quick and strong flight, all dogs, of every description, should be restrained from free hunting; and all dogs found hunting in the woods during the season referred to should be arrested, and their owners should be fined twenty dollars for each offense. Incidentally, one-half the fine should go to the citizen who arrests the dog. The method of restraining hunting dogs should devolve upon dog owners; and the law need only prohibit or punish the act.

Beyond a doubt, in states that still possess quail and ruffed grouse, free hunting by hunting dogs leads to great destruction of nests and broods during the breeding season.

Telegraph And Telephone Wires. —Mr. Daniel C. Beard has strongly called my attention to the slaughter of birds by telegraph wires that has come under his personal observation. His country home, at Redding, Connecticut, is near the main line of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railway, along which a line of very large poles carries a great number of wires. The wires are so numerous that they form a barrier through which it is difficult for any bird to fly and come out alive and unhurt.

Mr. Beard says that among the birds killed or crippled by flying against those wires near Redding he has seen the following species: olive-backed thrush, white-throated sparrow and other sparrows, oriole, blue jay, rail, ruffed grouse, and woodcock. It is a common practice for employees of the railway, and others living along the line, to follow the line and pick up on one excursion enough birds for a pot-pie.

Beyond question, the telegraph and telephone wires of the United States annually exact a heavy toll in bird life, and claim countless thousands of victims. They may well be set down as one of the unseen forces destructive to birds.

Naturally, we ask, what can be done about it?

I am told that in Scotland such slaughter is prevented by the attachment of small tags or discs to the telephone wires, at intervals of a few rods, sufficiently near that they attract the attention of flying birds, and reveal the line of an obstruction. This system should be adopted in all regions where the conditions are such that birds kill themselves against telegraph wires, and an excellent place to begin would be along the line of the N.Y., N.H. & H. Railway.

Wild Animals. —Beyond question, it is both desirable and necessary that any excess of wild animals that prey upon our grouse, quail, pheasants, [Page 78] woodcock, snipe, mallard duck, shore birds and other species that nest on the ground, should be killed. Since we must choose between the two, the birds have it! Weasels and foxes and skunks are interesting, and they do much to promote the hilarity of life in rural districts, but they do not destroy insects, and are of comparatively little value as destroyers of the noxious rodents that prey upon farm crops. While a few persons may dispute the second half of this proposition, the burden of proof that my view is wrong will rest upon them; and having spent eighteen years "on the farm," I think I am right. If there is any positive evidence tending to prove that the small carnivores that we class as "vermin" are industrious and persistent destroyers of noxious rodents—pocket gophers, moles, field-mice and rats—or that they do not kill wild birds numerously, now is the time to produce it, because the tide of public sentiment is strongly setting against the weasels, mink, foxes and skunks. (Once upon a time, a shrewd young man in the Zoological Park discovered a weasel hiding behind a stone while devouring a sparrow that it had just caught and killed. He stalked it successfully, seized it in his bare hand, and, even though bitten, made good the capture.)

The State of Pennsylvania is extensively wooded, with forests and with brush which affords excellent home quarters and breeding grounds for mammalian "vermin." The small predatory mammals are so seriously destructive to ruffed grouse and other ground birds that the State Game Commission is greatly concerned. When the hunter's license law is enacted, as it very surely will be at the next session of the legislature (1913), a portion of the $70,000 that it will produce each year will be used by the commission in paying bounties on the destruction of the surplus of vermin. Through the pursuit of vermin, any farmer can easily win enough bounties to more than pay the cost of his annual hunting license (one dollar), and the farmers' boys will find a new interest in life.

THE EASTERN RED SQUIRREL A Great Destroyer of Birds

In some portions of the Rocky Mountain region, the assaults of the large predatory mammals and birds on the young of the big-game species occasionally demand special treatment. In the Yellowstone Park the pumas multiplied to such an extent and killed so many young elk that their number had to be systematically reduced. To that end "Buffalo" Jones was sent out by the Government to find and destroy the intolerable surplus of pumas. In the course of his campaign he killed about forty, much to the benefit of the elk herds. Around the entrance to the den of a big old male puma, Mr. Jones found the skulls and other remains of nine elk calves that "the old Tom" had killed and carried there.

Pumas and lynxes attack and kill mountain sheep; and the golden eagle is very partial to mountain sheep lambs and mountain goat kids. It will not answer to permit birds of that bold and predatory species to become too numerous in mountains inhabited by goats and sheep; and the fewer the mountain lions the better, for they, like the lynx and eagle, have nothing to live upon save the game.

The wolves and coyotes have learned to seek the ranges of cattle, horses and sheep, where they still do immense damage, chiefly in killing young stock. In spite of the great sums that have been paid out by western states in bounties for the destruction of wolves, in many, many places the gray wolf still persists, and can not be exterminated. To the stockmen of the west the wolf question is a serious matter. The stockmen of Montana say that a government expert once told them how to get rid of the gray wolves. His instructions were: "Locate the dens, and kill the young in the dens, soon after they are born!" "All very easy to say, but a trifle difficult to do!" said my informant; and the ranchman seem to think they are yet a long way from a solution of the wolf question.

During the past year the destruction of noxious predatory animals in the national forest reserves has seriously occupied the attention of the United States Bureau of Forestry. By the foresters of that bureau the following animals were destroyed in fifteen western states:

The Red Squirrel. —Once in a great while, conditions change in subtle ways, wild creatures unexpectedly increase in number, and a community awakens to the fact that some wild species has become a public nuisance. In a small city park, even gray squirrels may breed and become so fearfully numerous that, in their restless quest for food, they may ravage the nests of the wild birds, kill and devour the young, and become a pest. In the Zoological Park, in 1903, we found that the red squirrels had increased to such a horde that they were driving out all our nesting wild birds, driving out the gray squirrels, and making themselves intolerably obnoxious. We shot sixty of them, and brought the total down to a reasonable number. Wherever he is or whatever his [Page 80] numerical strength, the red squirrel is a bad citizen, and, while we do not by any means favor his extermination, he should resolutely be kept within bounds by the rifle.

When a crow nested in our woods, near the Beaver Pond, we were greatly pleased; but with the feeding of the first brood, the crows began to carry off ducklings from the wild-fowl pond. After one crow had been seen to seize and carry away five young ducks in one forenoon, we decided that the constitutional limit had been reached, for we did not propose that all our young mallards should be swept into the awful vortex of that crow nest. We took those young crows and reared them by hand; but the old one had acquired a bad habit, and she persisted in carrying off young ducks until we had to end her existence with a gun. It was a painful operation, but there was no other way.

Bird-Destroying Birds. —There are several species of birds that may at once be put under sentence of death for their destructiveness of useful birds, without any extenuating circumstances worth mentioning. Four of these are Cooper's Hawk, the Sharp-Shinned Hawk, Pigeon Hawk and Duck Hawk. Fortunately these species are not so numerous that we need lose any sleep over them. Indeed, I think that today it would be a mighty good collector who could find one specimen in seven days' hunting. Like all other species, these, too, are being shot out of our bird fauna.

Several species of bird-eating birds are trembling in the balance, and under grave suspicion. Some of them are the Great Horned Owl, Screech Owl, Butcher Bird or Great Northern Shrike. The only circumstance that saves these birds from instant condemnation is the delightful amount of rats, mice, moles, gophers and noxious insects that they annually consume. In view of the awful destructiveness of the accursed bubonic-plague-carrying rat, we are impelled to think long before placing in our killing list even the great horned owl, who really does [Page 81] levy a heavy tax on our upland game birds. As to the butcher bird, we feel that we ought to kill him, but in view of his record on wild mice and rats, we hesitate, and finally decline.

COOPER'S HAWK A Species to be Destroyed	SHARP-SHINNED HAWK A Species to be Destroyed

Snakes. —Mr. Thomas M. Upp, a close and long observer of wild things wishes it distinctly understood that while the common black-snakes and racers are practically harmless to birds, the Pilot Black-Snake,—long, thick and truculent,—is a great scourge to nesting birds. It seems to be deserving of death. Mr. Upp speaks from personal knowledge, and his condemnation of the species referred to is quite sweeping. At the same time Mr. Raymond L. Ditmars points out the fact that this serpent feeds during 6 months of the year on mice, and in doing so renders good service. In the South it is called the "Mouse Snake."

Photo by A.C. Dyke

THE CAT THAT KILLED 58 BIRDS IN ONE YEAR

From Mr. Forbush's Book

Every cause that has the effect of reducing the total of wild-life population is now a matter of importance to mankind. The violent and universal disturbance of the balance of Nature that already has taken place throughout the temperate and frigid zone offers not only food for thought, but it calls for vigorous action.

There are vast sections in the populous centres of western civilization where the destruction of species, even to the point of extermination, is fairly inevitable. It is the way of Christian man to destroy all wild life that comes within the sphere of influence of his iron heel. With the exception of the big game, this destruction is largely a temperamental result, peculiar to the highest civilization. In India where the same fields have been plowed for wheat and dahl and raggi for at least 2,000 years, the Indian antelope, or "black buck," the saras crane and the adjutant stalk through the crops, and the nilgai and gazelle inhabit the eroded ravines in an agricultural land that averages 1,200 people to the square mile!

We have seen that even in farming country, where mud villages are as thick as farm houses in Nebraska, wild animals and even hoofed game can live and hold their own through hundreds of years of close association with man. The explanation is that the Hindus regard wild animals as creatures entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and they are not anxious to shoot every wild animal that shows its head. In the United States, nearly every game-inhabited community is animated by a feeling that every wild animal must necessarily be killed as soon as seen; and this sentiment often leads to disgraceful things. For instance, in some parts of New England a deer straying into a town is at once beset by the hue and cry, and it is chased and assaulted until it is dead, by violent and disgraceful means. New York State, however, seems to have outgrown that spirit. During the past ten years, at least a dozen deer in distress have been rescued from the Hudson River, or in inland towns, or in barnyards in the suburbs of Yonkers and New York, and carefully cared for until "the zoo people" could be communicated with. Last winter about 13 exhausted grebes and one loon were picked up, cared for and finally shipped with tender care to the Zoological Park. One distressed dovekie was picked up, but failed to survive.

The sentiment for the conservation of wild life has changed the mental attitude of very many people. The old Chinese-Malay spirit which cries [Page 83] "Kill! Kill!" and at once runs amuck among suddenly discovered wild animals, is slowly being replaced by a more humane and intelligent sentiment. This is one of the hopeful and encouraging signs of the times.

The destruction of wild animals by natural causes is an interesting subject, even though painful. We need to know how much destruction is wrought by influences wholly beyond the control of man, and a few cases must be cited.

Rinderpest In Africa. —Probably the greatest slaughter ever wrought upon wild animals by diseases during historic times, was by rinderpest, a cattle plague which afflicted Africa in the last decade of the previous century. Originally, the disease reached Africa by way of Egypt, and came as an importation from Europe. From Egypt it steadily traveled southward, reaching Somaliland in 1889. In 1896 it reached the Zambesi River and entered Rhodesia. From thence it went on southward almost to the Cape. Not only did it sweep away ninety percent of the native cattle but it also destroyed more than seventy-five per cent of the buffalos, antelopes and other hoofed game of Rhodesia. It was feared that many species would be completely exterminated, but happily that fear was not realized. The buffalo and antelope herds were fifteen years in breeding up again to a reasonable number, but thanks to the respite from hunters which they enjoyed for several years, finally they did recover. Throughout British East Africa the supply of big game in 1905 was very great, but since that time it has been very greatly diminished by shooting.

Caribou Disease. —From time to time reports have come from the Province of Quebec, and I think from Maine and New Brunswick also, of many caribou having died of disease. The nature of that disease has remained a mystery, because it seems that no pathologist ever has had an opportunity to investigate it. Fortunately, however, the alleged disease never has been sufficiently wide-spread or continuous to make appreciable inroads on the total number of caribou, and apparently the trouble has been local.

Scab In Mountain Sheep. —"Scab" is a contagious and persistent skin disease that affects sheep, and is destructive when not controlled. Fifteen years ago it prevailed in some portions of the west. In Colorado it has several times been reported that many bighorn mountain sheep were killed by "scab," which was contracted on wild mountain pastures that had been gone over by domestic sheep carrying that disease. From the reports current at that time, we inferred that about 200 mountain sheep had been affected. It was feared that the disease would spread through the wild flocks and become general, but this did not occur. It seems that the remnant flocks had become so isolated from one another that the isolation of the affected flocks saved the others.

Lumpy-Jaw In Antelope And Sheep. —It is a lamentable fact that some, at least, of the United States herds of prong-horned antelope are afflicted with a very deadly chronic infective disease known as actinomycosis, or [Page 84] lumpy-jaw. It has been brought into the Zoological Park five times, by specimens shipped from Colorado, Texas, Wyoming and Montana. I think our first cases came to us in 1902.

In its early stage this disease is so subtle and slow that it is months in developing; and this feature renders it all the more deadly, through the spread of infection long before the ailment can be discovered.

One of our antelope arrivals, apparently in perfect health when received, was on general principles kept isolated in rigid quarantine for two months. At the expiration of that period, no disease of any kind having become manifest, the animal was placed on exhibition, with two others that had been in the Park for more than a year, in perfect health.

In one more week the late arrival developed a swelling on its jaw, drooled at the corner of the mouth, and became feverish,—sure symptoms of the dread disease. At once it was removed and isolated, but in about 10 days it died. The other two antelopes were promptly attacked, and eventually died.

The course of the disease is very intense, and thus far it has proven incurable in our wild animals. We have lost about 10 antelopes from it, and one deer, usually, in each case, within ten days or two weeks from the discovery of the first outward sign,—the well known swelling on the jaw. One case that was detected immediately upon arrival was very persistently treated by Dr. Blair, and the animal actually survived for four months, but finally it succumbed. From first to last not a single case was cured.

In 1912, the future of the prong-horned antelope in real captivity seems hopeless. We have decided not to bring any more specimens to our institution, partly because all available candidates seem reasonably certain to be affected with lumpy-jaw, and partly because we are unwilling to run further risks of having other hoofed animals inoculated by them. Today we are anxiously wondering whether the jaw disease of the prong-horn is destined to exterminate the species. Such a catastrophe is much to be feared. This is probably one of the reasons why the antelope is steadily disappearing, despite protection.

In 1906 we discovered the existence of actinomycosis among the black mountain sheep of northern British Columbia. Two specimens out of six were badly affected, the bones of the jaws being greatly enlarged, and perforated by deep pits. The black sheep of the Stickine and Iskoot regions are so seldom seen by white men, save when a sportsman kills his allotment of three specimens, we really do not know anything about the extent to which actinomycosis prevails in those herds, or how deadly are its effects. One thing seems quite certain, from the appearance of the diseased skulls found by the writer in the taxidermic laboratory of Frederick Sauter, in New York. The enormous swelling of the diseased jaw bones clearly indicates a disease that in some cases affects its victim throughout many months. Such a condition as we found in those sheep could not have been reached in a few days after the disease became [Page 85] apparent. Now, in our antelopes, the collapse and death of the victim usually occurred in about 10 days from the time that the first swelling was observed: which means a very virulent disease, and rapid progress at the climax. The jaw of one of our antelopes, which was figured in Dr. Blair's paper in the Eleventh Annual Report of the New York Zoological Society (1906) shows only a very slight lesion, in comparison with those of the mountain sheep.

The conclusion is that among the sheep, this disease does not carry off its victims in any short period like 10 days. The animal must survive for some months after it becomes apparent. At least two parties of American sportsmen have shot rams afflicted with this disease, but I have no reports of any sheep having been found dead from this cause.

This disease is well known among domestic cattle, but so far as we are aware it never before has been found among wild animals. The black sheep herds wherein it was found in British Columbia are absolutely isolated from domestic cattle and all their influences, and therefore it seems quite certain that the disease developed among the sheep spontaneously,—a remarkable episode, to say the least. Whether it will exterminate the black mountain sheep species, and in time spread to the white sheep of the northwest, is of course a matter of conjecture; but there is nothing in the world to prevent a calamity of that kind. The white sheep of Yukon Territory range southward until in the Sheslay Mountains they touch the sphere of influence of the black sheep, where the disease could easily be transmitted. It would be a good thing if there existed between the two species a sheepless zone about 200 miles wide.

I greatly fear that actinomycosis is destined to play an important part in the final extinction that seems to be the impending fate of the beautiful and valuable prong-horned antelope. In view of our hard experiences, extending through ten years (1902-1912), I think this fear is justified. All persons who live in country still inhabited by antelope are urged to watch for this disease. If any antelopes are found dead, see if the lower jaw is badly swollen and discharging pus. If it is, bury the body quickly, burn the ground over, and advise the writer regarding the case.

The Rabbit Plague. —One of the strangest freaks of Nature of which we know as effecting the wholesale destruction of wild animals by disease is the rabbit plague. In the northern wilderness, and particularly central Canada, where rabbits exist in great numbers and supply the wants of a large carnivorous population, this plague is well known, and among trappers and woodsmen is a common topic of conversation. The best treatment of the subject is to be found in Ernest T. Seton's "Life Histories of Northern Animals", Vol. I, p. 640 et seq. From this I quote:

"Invariably the year of greatest numbers [of rabbits] is followed by a year of plague, which sweeps them away, leaving few or no rabbits in the land. The denser the rabbit population, the more drastically is it [Page 86] ravaged by the plague. They are wiped out in a single spring by epidemic diseases usually characterized by swellings of the throat, sores under the armpits and groins, and by diarrhea."

"The year 1885 was for the country around Carberry 'a rabbit year,' the greatest ever known in that country. The number of rabbits was incredible. W.R. Hine killed 75 in two hours, and estimated that he could have killed 500 in a day. The farmers were stricken with fear that the rabbit pest of Australia was to be repeated in Manitoba. But the years 1886-7 changed all that. The rabbits died until their bodies dotted the country in thousands. The plague seemed to kill all the members of the vast host of 1885."

The strangest item of Mr. Seton's story is yet to be told. In 1890 Mr. Seton stocked his park at Cos Cob, Conn., with hares and rabbits from several widely separated localities. In 1903, the plague came and swept them all away. Mr. Seton sent specimens to the Zoological Park for examination by the Park veterinary surgeon, Dr. W. Reid Blair. They were found to be infested by great numbers of a dangerous bloodsucking parasite known as Strongylus strigosus, which produces death by anemia and emaciation. There were hundreds of those parasites in each animal. I assisted in the examination, and was shown by Dr. Blair, under the microscope, that Strongylus puts forth eggs literally by hundreds of thousands!

The life history of that parasite is not well known, but it may easily develop that the cycle of its maximum destructiveness is seven years, and therefore it may be accountable for the seven-year plague among the hares and rabbits of the northern United States and Canada.

Possibly Strongylus strigosus is all that stands between Canada and a pest of rabbits like that of Australia. Just why this parasite is inoperative in Australia, or why it has not been introduced there to lessen the rabbit evil, we do not know. Mr. Seton declares that the rabbits of his park were "subject to all the ills of the flesh, except possibly writer's paralysis and housemaid's knee."

Parasitic Infection Of Wild Ducks. —The diseases of wild game, especially waterfowl, grouse and quail, have caused heavy losses in America as well as in European countries, and scientists have been carefully investigating the cause and the general nature of the maladies, as well as probable methods of prevention and cure. Mr. Geo. Atkinson, a well-known practical naturalist of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, writes as follows to a local paper on this subject, which I find quoted in the National Sportsman:

The greatest slaughter of wild ducks by disease occurred on Great Salt Lake, Utah. Until the "duck disease" (intestinal coccidiosis) broke out there, in the summer of 1910, the annual market slaughter of ducks at the mouth of Bear River had been enormous. When at Salt Lake City in 1888 I made an effort to arouse the sportsmen whom I met to the necessity of a reform, but my exhortations fell on deaf ears. Naturally, the sweeping away of the remaining ducks by disease would suggest a heaven-sent judgment upon the slaughterers were it not for the fact that the last state of the unfortunate ducks is if anything worse than the first.

On Oct. 17, 1911, the annual report of the chief of the Biological Survey contained the following information on this subject:

It is a fixed condition of Nature that whenever and wherever a wild species exists in a state of nature, free from the trammels and limitations that contact with man always imposes, the species is fitted to survive all ordinary climatic influences. Freedom of action, and the exercise of several options in the line of individual maintenance under stress, is essential to the welfare of every wild species.

A prong-horned antelope herd that is free can drift before a blizzard, can keep from freezing by the exercise, and eventually come to shelter. Let that same herd drift against a barbed-wire fence five miles long, and its whole scheme of self-preservation is upset. The herd perishes then and there.

Cut out the undergrowth of a given section, drain the swamps and mow down all the weeds and tall grass, and the next particularly hard winter starves and freezes the quail.

Naturally the cutting of forests, clearing of brush and drainage of marshes is more or less calamitous to all the species of birds that inhabit such places and find there winter food and shelter. Red-winged blackbirds and real estate booms can not inhabit the same swamps contemporaneously. Before the relentless march of civilization, the wild Indian, the bison and many of the wild birds must inevitably disappear. We cannot change conditions that are as inexorable as death itself. The wild life must either adjust itself to the conditions that civilized man imposes upon it, or perish. I say "civilized man," for the reason that the primitive races of man are not deadly exterminators of species, as we are. I know of not one species of wild life that has been exterminated by savage man without the aid of his civilized peers.

As civilization marches ever onward, over the prairies, into the bad lands and the forests, over the mountains and even into the farthest corner of Death Valley, the desert of deserts, the struggle of the wild birds, mammals and fishes is daily and hourly intensified. Man must help them to maintain themselves, or accept a lifeless continent. The best help consists in letting the wild creatures throughly alone, so that they can help themselves; but quail often need to be fed in critical periods. The best food is wheat screenings placed under little tents of straw, bringing food and shelter together.

In the well settled portions of the United States, such species as quail, ruffed grouse, wild turkey, pinnated grouse and sage grouse hang [Page 89] to life by slender threads. A winter of exceptionally deep snows, much sleet, and a late spring always causes grave anxiety among the state game wardens. In Pennsylvania a very earnest movement is in progress to educate and persuade farmers to feed the quail in winter, and much good is being done in that direction.

Mr. Erasmus Wilson, of the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times is the apostle of that movement.

Quail should be fed every winter, in every northern state. The methods to be pursued will be mentioned elsewhere.

By way of illustration, here is a sample game report, from Las Animas, Colorado, Feb. 22, 1912:

"After the most severe winter weather experienced for twenty years we are able to compute approximately our loss of feathered life. It is seventy-five per cent of the quail throughout the irrigated district, and about twenty per cent of meadow-larks. In the rough cedar-covered sections south of the Arkansas River, the loss among the quail was much lighter. The ground sparrows suffered severely, while the English sparrow seems to have come through in good shape. Many cotton-tail rabbits starved to death, while the deep, light snow of January made them easy prey for hawks and coyotes." (F.T. Webber).

It would be possible to record many instances similar to the above, but why multiply them? And now behold the cruel corollary:

At least twenty-five times during the past two years I have heard and read arguments by sportsmen against my proposal for a 5-year close season for quail, taking the ground that "The sportsmen are not wholly to blame for the scarcity of quail. It is the cold winters that kill them off!"

So then, because the fierce winters murder the bob white, wholesale, they should not have a chance to recover themselves! Could human beings possibly assume a more absurd attitude?

Yes, it is coldly and incontestably true, that even after such winter slaughter as Mr. Webber has reported above, the very next season will find the quail hunter joyously taking the field, his face beaming with health and good living, to hunt down and shoot to death as many as possible of the pitiful 25 per cent remnant that managed to survive the pitiless winter. How many quail hunters, think you, ever stayed their hands because of "a hard winter on the quail?" I warrant not one out of every hundred! How many states in this Union ever put on a close season because of a hard winter? I'll warrant that not one ever did; and I think there is only one state whose game commissioners have the power to act in that way without recourse to the legislature. This situation is intolerable.

Thanks to the splendid codified game laws enacted in New York state in 1912, our Conservation Commission can declare a close season in any locality, for any length of time, when the state of the game demands an emergency measure. This act is as follows; and it is a model law, which every other state should speedily enact:

I want all sensible, honest sportsmen to stop citing the killing of game birds by severe winters as a reason why long close seasons are not necessary, and why automatic guns "don't matter." And I want sportsmen to consider their duty, and not go out hunting any game species that has been slaughtered by a hard winter, until it has had at least five years in which to recover. Any other course is cruel, selfish, and shortsighted; and a word to the humane should be sufficient.

The worst exhibitions ever made of the wolfish instinct to slay that springs eternal in some human (!) breasts are those brought about through the distress or errors of wild animals. By way of illustration, consider the slaughter of half-starved elk that took place in the edge of Idaho in the winter of 1909 and 1910, when about seven hundred elk [Page 91] that were driven out of the Yellowstone Park at its northwestern corner by the deep snow, fled into Idaho in the hope of finding food. The inhabitants met the starving herds with repeating rifles, and as the unfortunate animals struggled westward through the snow and storm, they were slaughtered without mercy. Bulls and cows, old and young, all of the seven hundred, went down; and Stoney Indians could not have acted any worse than did those "settlers."

On another occasion, it is recorded that the prong-horned antelope herd of the Mammoth Hot Springs wandered across the line into Gardiner, and quickly met a savage attack of gunners with rifles. A number of those rare and valuable animals were killed, and others fled back into the Park with broken legs dangling in the air.

In the interest of public decency, and for the protection of the reputation of American citizenship, one of two things should be done. The northern boundary of the Park should be extended northward beyond Gardiner, or else the deathtrap should be moved elsewhere. The case of the town of Gardiner is referred to the legislature of Montana for treatment.

Beyond question, the highest sentiments of humanity are those that are stirred by the misfortunes of killable game. During the past thirty years, I have noticed some interesting manifestations of the increased sympathy for wild creatures that steadily is growing in a large section of the public mind. Thirty years ago, the appearance of a deer or moose in the streets of any eastern village nearly always was in itself a signal for a grand chase of the unfortunate creature, and its speedy slaughter. Today, in the eastern states, the general feeling is quite different. The appearance of a deer in the Hudson River itself, or a moose in a Maine village is a signal, not for a wild chase and cruel slaughter, but for a general effort to save the animal from being hurt, or killed. I know this through ocular proof, at least half a dozen lost and bewildered deer having been carefully driven into yards, or barns, and humanely kept and cared for until they could be shipped to us. Several have been caught while swimming in the Hudson, bewildered and panic-stricken. The latest capture occurred in New York City itself.

A puma that escaped (about 1902) from the Zoological Park, instead of being shot was captured by sensible people in the hamlet of Bronxdale, alive and unhurt, and safely returned to us.

In some portions of the east, though not all, the day of the hue and cry over "a wild animal in town" seems to be about over. On Long Island some humane persons found an injured turkey vulture, and took it in and cared for it,—only to be persecuted by ill-advised game wardens, because they had a forbidden wild bird "in their possession!" There are times when it is the highest (moral) duty of a game warden to follow the advice of Private Mulvaney to the "orficer boy," and "Shut yer oye to the rigulations, sorr!"

Such occurrences as these are becoming more and more common. The desire of "the great silent majority" is to SAVE the wild creatures; and it [Page 92] is in response to that sentiment that thousands of people are today in the field against the Army of Destruction.

It is the duty of every sportsman to assist in promoting the passage of a law like our New York law which empowers the State Game Commission to throw extra protection around any species that has been slaughtered too much by snow or by firearms, by closing the open season as long as may be necessary. Can there be in all America even one thinking, reasoning being who can not see the justice and also the imperative necessity of this measure? It seems impossible.

Give the game the benefit of every doubt! If it becomes too thick, your gun can quickly thin it out; but if it is once exterminated, it will be impossible to bring it back. Be wise; and take thought for the morrow. Remember the heath hen.

Slaughter Of Bluebirds. —In the late winter and early spring of 1896 the wave of bluebirds was caught on its northward migration by a period of unseasonably cold and fearfully tempestuous weather, involving much icy-cold rain and sleet. Now, there is no other climatic condition that is so hard for a wild bird or mammal to withstand as rain at the freezing point, and a mantle of ice or frozen snow over all supplies of food.

The bluebirds perished by thousands. The loss occurred practically all along their east-and-west line of migration, from Arkansas to the Atlantic Coast. In places the species seemed almost exterminated; and it was several years ere it recovered to a point even faintly approximating its original population. I am quite certain that the species never has recovered more than 50 per cent of the number that existed previous to the calamity.

Duck Cholera In The Bronx River. —In 1911, some unknown but new and particularly deadly element, probably introduced in sewage, contaminated the waters of Bronx River where it flows through New York City, with results very fatal in the Zoological Park. The large flock of mallard ducks, Canada geese, and snow geese on Lake Agassiz was completely wiped out. In all about 125 waterfowl died in rapid succession, from causes commonly classed under the popular name of "duck cholera." The disease was carried to other bodies of water in the Park that were fed from other sources, but made no headway elsewhere than on lakes fed by the polluted Bronx River.

Fortunately the work of the Bronx River Parkway Commission soon will terminate the present very unsanitary condition of that stream.

Wild Ducks In Distress. —In the winter of 1911-12, many flocks of wild ducks decided to winter in the North. Many persons believe that this was largely due to the prevention of late winter and spring shooting; which seems reasonable. Unfortunately the winter referred to proved exceptionally severe and formed vast sheets of thick ice over the feeding-grounds where the ducks had expected to obtain their food. On Cayuga, Seneca and other lakes in central New York, and on the island of Martha's Vineyard, the flocks of ducks suffered very severely, and many [Page 93] perished of hunger and cold. But for the laws prohibiting late winter shooting undoubtedly all of them would have been shot and eaten, regardless of their distress.

Game wardens and humane citizens made numerous efforts to feed the starving flocks, and many ducks were saved in that way. An illustrated article on the distressed ducks of Keuka Lake, by C. William Beebe and Verdi Burtch, appeared in the Zoological Society Bulletin for May, 1912. Fortunately there is every reason to believe that such occurrences will be rare.

Wild Swans Swept Over Niagara Falls. —During the past ten years, several winter tragedies to birds have occurred on a large scale at Niagara Falls. Whole flocks of whistling swans of from 20 up to 70 individuals alighting in the Niagara River above the rapids have permitted themselves to float down into the rapids, and be swept over the Falls, en masse. On each occasion, the great majority of the birds were drowned, or killed on the rocks. Of the very few that survived, few if any were able to rise and fly out of the gorge below the Falls to safety. It is my impression that about 200 swans recently have perished in this strange way.

In these days of wild-life slaughter, we hear much of death and destruction. Before our eyes there continually arise photographs of hanging masses of waterfowl, grouse, pheasants, deer and fish, usually supported in true heraldic fashion by the men who slew them and the implements of slaughter. The world has become somewhat hardened to these things, because the victims are classed as game; and in the destruction of game, one game-bag more or less "Will not count in the news of the battle."

The slaughter of song, insectivorous and all other birds by Italians and other aliens from southern Europe has become a scourge to the bird life of this country. The devilish work of the negroes and poor whites of the South will be considered in the next chapter. In Italy, linnets and sparrows are "game"; and so is everything else that wears feathers! Italy is a continuous slaughtering-ground for the migratory birds of Europe, and as such it is an international nuisance and a pest. The way passerine birds are killed and eaten in that country is a disgrace to the government of Italy, and a standing reproach to the throne. Even kings and parliaments have no right in moral or international law to permit year after year the wholesale slaughter of birds of passage of species that no civilized man has a right to kill.

There are some tales of slaughter from which every properly-balanced Christian mind is bound to recoil with horror. One such tale has recently been given to us in the pages of the Avicultural Magazine, of London, for January, 1912, by Mr. Hubert D. Astley, F.Z.S., whose word no man will dispute. In condensing it, let us call it

This story does not concern game birds of any kind. Quite the contrary. That it should be published in America, a land now rapidly filling up with Italians, is a painful necessity in order that the people of America may be enabled accurately to measure the fatherland traditions and the fixed mental attitude of Italians generally toward our song birds. I shall now hold a mirror up to Italian nature. If the image is either hideous or grotesque, the fault will not be mine. I specially commend the picture to the notice of American game wardens and judges on the bench.

The American reader must be reminded that the Italian peninsula reaches out a long arm of land into the Mediterranean Sea for several hundred miles toward the sunny Barbary coast of North Africa. This great southward highway has been chosen by the birds of central Europe as their favorite migration route. Especially is this true of the small song-birds with weak wings and a minimum of power for long-sustained flight. Naturally, they follow the peninsula down to the Italian Land's End before they launch forth to dare the passage of the Mediterranean.

AN ITALIAN ROCCOLO, ON LAKE COMO

A Death-Trap for Song-Birds. From the Avicultural Magazine

Italy is the narrow end of a great continental funnel, into the wide northern end of which Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland annually pour their volume of migratory bird life. And what is the result? For answer let us take the testimony of two reliable witnesses, and file it for use on the day when Tony Macchewin, gun in hand and pockets bulging with cartridges, goes afield in our country and opens fire on our birds.

The linnet is one of the sweet singers of Europe. It is a small, delicately formed, weak-winged little bird, about the size of our phoebe-bird. It weighs only a trifle more than a girl's love-letter. Where it breeds and rears its young, in Germany for example, a true sportsman would no more think of shooting a linnet than he would of killing and eating his daughter's dearest canary.

To the migrating bird, the approach to northern Italy, either going or returning, is not through a land of plenty. The sheltering forests have mostly been swept away, and safe shelters for small birds are very rare. In the open, there are owls and hawks; and the only refuge from either is the thick-leafed grove, into which linnets and pipits can dive at the approach of danger and quickly hide.

A linnet from the North after days of dangerous travel finally reached Lake Como, southward bound. The country was much too open for safety, and its first impulse was to look about for safe shelter. The low bushes that sparsely covered the steep hillsides were too thin for refuge in times of sudden danger.

Ah! Upon a hilltop is a little grove of trees, green and inviting. In the grove a bird is calling, calling, insistently. The trees are very small; but they seem to stand thickly together, and their foliage should afford a haven from both hawk and gunner. To it joyously flits the tired linnet. As it perches aloft upon a convenient whip-like wand, it notices for the first time a queer, square brick tower of small dimensions, rising in the center of a court-yard surrounded by trees. The tower is like an old and dingy turret that has been shorn from a castle, and set on the hilltop without apparent reason. It is two stories in height, with one window, dingy and uninviting. A door opens into its base.

Several birds that seem very near, but are invisible, frequently call and chirp, as if seeking answering calls and companionship. Surely the grove must be a safe place for birds, or they would not be here.

Hark! A whirring, whistling sound fills the air, like the air tone of a flying hawk's wings. A hawk! A hawk!

Down plunges the scared linnet, blindly, frantically, into the space sheltered by the grove!

Horrors! What is this?

Threads! Invisible, interlacing threads; tangled and full of pockets, treacherously spanning the open space. It is a fowler's net! The linnet is entangled. It flutters frantically but helplessly, and hangs there, caught. Its alarm cry is frantically answered by the two strange, invisible bird voices that come from the top of the tower!

The grove and the tower are A ROCCOLO! A huge, permanent, merciless, deadly trap, for the wholesale capture of songbirds! The tower is the hiding place of the fowler, and the calling birds are decoy birds whose eyes have been totally blinded by red-hot wires in order that they will call more frantically than birds with eyes would do. The whistling wings that seemed a hawk were a sham, made by a racquet thrown through the air by the fowler, through a slot in his tower. He keeps by him many such racquets.

The door of the tower opens, and out comes the fowler. He is lowbrowed, swarthy, ill kept, and wears rings in his ears. A soiled hand seizes the struggling linnet, and drags it violently from the threads that entangled it. A sharp-pointed twig is thrust straight through the head of the helpless victim at the eyes, and after one wild, fluttering agony—it is dead.

The fowler sighs contentedly, re-enters his dirty and foul-smelling tower, tosses the feathered atom upon the pile of dead birds that lies upon the dirty floor in a dirty corner,—and is ready for the next one.

Ask him, as did Mr. Astley, and he will tell you frankly that there are about 150 dead birds in the pile,—starlings, sparrows, linnets, greenfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches, hawfinches, redstarts, blackcaps, robins, song thrushes, blackbirds, blue and coal tits, fieldfares and redwings. He will tell you also, that there are seven other roccolos within sight and twelve within easy walking distance. He will tell you, as he did Mr. Astley, that during that week he had taken about 500 birds, and that that number was a fair average for each of the 12 other roccolos.

This means the destruction of about 5,000 songbirds per week in that neighborhood alone! Another keeper of a roccolo told Mr. Astley that during the previous autumn he took about 10,000 birds at his small and comparatively insignificant roccolo.

And above that awful roccolo of slaughtered innocents rose a wooden cross, in memory of Christ, the Merciful, the Compassionate!

Around the interior of the entwined sapling tops that formed the fatal bower of death there hung a semicircle of tiny cages containing live decoys,—chaffinches, hawfinches, titmice and several other species. "The older and staider ones call repeatedly," says Mr. Astley, "and the chaffinches break into song. It is the only song to be heard in Italy at the time of the autum migration."

And the King of Italy, the Queen of Italy, the Parliament of Italy and His Holiness the Pope permit these things, year in and year out. It is now said, however, that through the efforts of a recently organized [Page 98] bird-lovers' society in Italy, the blinding of decoy birds for roccolos is to be stopped.

In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the protection of these birds during their breeding season must be very effective, for otherwise the supply for the Italian slaughter of the Innocents would long ago have fallen to nothing.

The Germans love birds, and all wild life. I wonder how they like the Italian roccolo. I wonder how France regards it; and whether the nations of Europe north of Italy will endure this situation forever.

To the American and English reader, comment on the practices recorded above is quite unnecessary, except the observation that they betoken a callousness of feeling and a depth of cruelty and destructiveness to which, so far as known, no savages ever yet have sunk. As an exhibit of the groveling pusillanimity of the human soul, the roccolo of northern Italy reveals minus qualities which can not be expressed either in words or in figures.

And what is the final exhibit of the gallant knight of the roccolo, the feudal lord of the modern castle and its retainers?

The answer is given by Dr. Louis B. Bishop, in an article on "Birds in the Markets of Southern Europe."

In Venice, which was visited in October and November, during the fall migration, he found on sale in the markets, as food, thousands of songbirds.

"Birds were there in profusion, from ducks to kites, in the early morning, hung in great bunches above the stalls, but by 9 A.M. most of them had been sold. Ducks and shorebirds occurred in some numbers, but the vast majority were small sparrows, larks and thrushes. These were there during my visit by the thousands, if not ten thousands. To the market they were brought in large sacks, strung in fours on twigs which had been passed through the eyes and then tied. Most of these small birds had been trapped, and on skinning them I often could find no injury except at their eyes. [C] One of these sacks which I examined on November 3, contained hundreds of birds, largely siskins, skylarks and bramblings. As a rule the small birds that were not sold in the early morning were skinned or picked, and their tiny bodies packed in regular order, breasts up, in shadow tin boxes, and exposed for sale."

"During these visits to the Venetian markets, I identified 60 species, and procured specimens of most. As nearly as I can remember, small birds cost from two to five cents apiece. For example I paid $2.15 on Nov. 8, for

"On November 10, I paid $3.25 for

Of course there were various species of upland game birds, shore-birds and waterfowl,—everything, in fact, that could be found and killed. In addition to the passerine birds listed above. Dr. Bishop noted the following, all in Venice alone:

"In Florence," says Dr. Bishop, "I visited the central market on November 26, 28, 29, 30, December 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, and found birds even more plentiful than in Venice." Besides a variety of game birds, he found quantities of the species mentioned above, seen in Venice, and also the following:

"Here, too [at Florence] we saw often, bunches and baskets of small birds, chiefly redbreasts, hawked through the streets.... Every Sunday that we went into the country we met numbers of Italians out shooting, and their bags seemed to consist wholly of small birds.

"At Genoa, San Remo, Monte Carlo and Nice, between December 13 and 29, I did not visit the central markets, if such exist, but saw frequently bunches of small birds hanging outside stores.... A gentleman who spent the fall on an automobile trip through the west of FRANCE from Brittany to the Pyrenees, tells me he noticed these bunches of small birds on sale in every town he visited.

"That killing song-birds for food," continues Dr. Bishop, "is not confined to the poor Italians I learned on October 27, when one of the most prominent and wealthy Italian ornithologists—a delightful man—told me he had shot 180 skylarks and pipits the day before, and that his family liked them far better than other game. Our prejudice against selling game does not exist in Europe, and this same ornithologist told me he often shot 200 ducks in a day at his shooting-box, sending to the market what he could not use himself. On November 1, 1910, he shot 82 ducks, and on November 8, 103, chiefly widgeon and teal."

An "ornithologist" indeed! A "sportsman" also, is he not? He belongs with his brother "ornithologists" of the roccolos, who net their "game" with the aid of blind birds! Brave men, gallant "sportsmen," are these men of Italy,—and western France also if the tale is true!

If the people of Europe can stand the wholesale, systematic slaughter of their song and insectivorous birds, we can! If they are too mean-spirited to rise up, make a row about it, and stop it, then let them pay the price; but, by the Eternal, Antonio shall not come to this country with the song-bird tastes of the roccolo and indulge them here!

The above facts have been cited, not at all for the benefit of Europe, but for our own good. The American People are now confronted by the Italian and Austrian and Hungarian laborer and saloon-keeper and mechanic, and all Americans should have an exact measure of the sentiments of southern Europe toward our wild life generally, especially the birds that we do not shoot at all, and therefore are easy to kill.

When a warden or a citizen arrests an alien for killing any of our non-game birds, show the judge these records of how they do things in Italy, and ask for the extreme penalty.

I have taken pains to publish the above facts from eye-witnesses in order that every game commissioner, game warden and state legislator who reads these pages may know exactly what he is "up against" in the alien population of our country from southern Europe. For unnumbered generations, the people of Italy have been taught to believe that it is perfectly right to shoot and devour every song-bird that flies. The Venetian is no respecter of species; and when an Italian "ornithologist" (!) can go out and murder 180 linnets and pipits in one day for the pot, it is time for Americans to think hard.

We sincerely hope that it will not require blows and kicks and fines to remove from Antonio's head the idea that America is not Italy, and that the slaughter of song birds "don't go" in this country. I strongly recommend to every state the enactment of a law that will do these things:

1. —Prohibit the owning, carrying or use of firearms by aliens, and
2. —Prohibit the use of firearms in hunting by any naturalized alien from southern Europe until after a 10-years' residence in America.

From reports that have come to me at first hand regarding Italians in the East, Hungarians in Pennsylvania and Austrians in Minnesota, it seems absolutely certain that all members of the lower classes of southern Europe are a dangerous menace to our wild life.

On account of the now-accursed land-of-liberty idea, every foreigner who sails past the statue on Bedloe's Island and lands on our liberty-ridden shore, is firmly convinced that now, at last, he can do as he pleases! And as one of his first ways in which to show his newly-acquired personal liberty and independence in the Land of Easy Marks, he buys a gun and goes out to shoot "free game!"

If we, as a people, are so indolent and so somnolent that Antonio gets away with all our wild birds, then do we deserve to be robbed.

Italians are pouring into America in a steady stream. They are strong, prolific, persistent and of tireless energy. New York City now contains 340,000 of them. They work while the native Americans sleep. Wherever they settle, their tendency is to root out the native American and take his place and his income. Toward wild life the Italian laborer is a human mongoose. Give him power to act, and he will quickly exterminate every wild thing that wears feathers or hair. To our songbirds he is literally a "pestilence that walketh at noonday".

As we have shown, the Italian is a born pot-hunter, and he has grown up in the fixed belief that killing song-birds for food is right! To him all is game that goes into the bag. The moment he sets foot in the open, he provides himself with a shot-gun, and he looks about for things to kill. It is "a free country;" therefore, he may kill anything he can find, cook it and eat it. If anybody attempts to check him,—sapristi! beware his gun! He cheerfully invades your fields, and even your lawn; and he shoots robins, bluebirds, thrushes, catbirds, grosbeaks, tanagers, orioles, woodpeckers, quail, snipe, ducks, crows, and herons.

Down in Virginia, near Charlottesville, an Italian who was working on a new railroad once killed a turkey buzzard; and he selfishly cooked it and ate it, all alone. A pot-hunting compatriot of his heard of it, and reproached him for having-dined on game in camera. In the quarrel that ensued, one of the "sportsmen" stabbed the other to death.

When the New York Zoological Society began work on its Park in 1899, the northern half of the Borough of the Bronx was a regular daily hunting-ground for the slaughter of song-birds, and all other birds that could be found. Every Sunday it was "bangetty!" "bang!" from Pelham Bay to Van Cortlandt. The police force paid not the slightest attention to these open, flagrant, shameless violations of the city ordinances and the state bird laws. In those days I never but once heard of a policeman on his own initiative arresting a birdshooter, even on Sunday; but whenever meddlesome special wardens from the Zoological Park have pointedly called upon the local police force for help, it has always been given with cheerful alacrity. In the fall of 1912 an appeal to the Police Commissioner resulted in a general order to stop all hunting and shooting in the Borough of the Bronx, and a reform is now on.

The war on the bird-killers in New York City began in 1900. It seemed that if the Zoological Society did not take up the matter, the slaughter would continue indefinitely. The white man's burden was taken up; and [Page 102] the story of the war is rather illuminating. Mr. G.O. Shields, President of the League of American Sportsmen, quickly became interested in the matter, and entered actively into the campaign. For months unnumbered, he spent every Sunday patroling the woods and thickets of northern New York and Westchester county, usually accompanied by John J. Rose and Rudolph Bell of the Zoological Park force, for whom appointments as deputy game wardens had been secured from the State.

The adventures of that redoubtable trio of man-hunters would make an interesting chapter. They were shot at by poachers, but more frequently they shot at the other fellows. Just why it was that no one was killed, no one seems to know. Many Italians and several Americans were arrested while hunting, haled to court, prosecuted and fined. Finally, a reign of terror set in; and that was the beginning of the end. It became known that those three men could not be stopped by threats, and that they always got their man—unless he got into a human rabbit-warren of the Italian boarding-house species. That was the only escape that was possible.

The largest haul of dead birds was 43 robins, orioles, thrushes and woodpeckers, captured along with the five Italians who committed the indiscretion of sitting down in the woods to divide their dead birds. We saved all the birds in alcohol, and showed them in court. The judge fined two of the Italians $50 each, and the other three were sent to the penitentiary for two months each.

Even yet, however, at long intervals an occasional son of sunny Italy tries his luck at Sunday bird shooting; but if anyone yells at him to "Halt!" he throws away his gun and stampedes through the brush like a frightened deer. The birds of upper New York are now fairly secure; but it has taken ten years of fighting to bring it about.

Throughout New York State, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and even Minnesota, wherever there are large settlements of Italians and Hungarians, the reports are the same. They swarm through the country every Sunday, and shoot every wild thing they see. Wherever there are large construction works,—railroads, canals or aqueducts,—look for bird slaughter, and you are sure to find it. The exception to this rule, so far as I know, is along the line of the new Catskill aqueduct, coming to New York City. The contractors have elected not to permit bird slaughter, and the rule has been made that any man who goes out hunting will instantly be discharged. That is the best rule that ever was made for the protection of birds and game against gang-working aliens.

Let every state and province in America look out sharply for the bird-killing foreigner; for sooner or later, he will surely attack your wild life. The Italians are spreading, spreading, spreading. If you are without them to-day, to-morrow they will be around you. Meet them at the threshold with drastic laws, throughly enforced; for no half way measures will answer.

Pennsylvania has had the worst experience of alien slaughterers of any state, thus far. Six of her game wardens have been killed, and eight or ten have been wounded, by shooting! Finally her legislature arose in wrath, and passed a law prohibiting the ownership or possession of guns of any kind by aliens. The law gives the right of domiciliary search, and it surely is enforced. Of course the foreign population "kicked" against the law, but the People's steam roller went over them just the same. In New York, we require from an alien a license costing $20, and it has saved a million (perhaps) of our birds; but the Pennsylvania law is the best. It may be taken as a model for every state and province in America. Its text is as follows:

Other sections provide for the full enforcement of this law.

It is now high time, and an imperative public necessity, that every state should act in this matter, before its bird life is suddenly attacked, and serious inroads made upon it. Do it NOW! The enemy is headed your way. Don't wait for him to strike the first blow!

Duty of the Italian Press and Clergy.—Now what is the best remedy for the troubles that will arise for Italians in America because of wrong principles established in Italy? It is not in the law, the police, the court and the punishment. It is in educating the Italian into a knowledge of the duties of the good citizen! The Italian press and clergy can do this; and no one else can do it so easily, so quickly and so well!

Those two powerful forces should enter seriously upon this task. In every other respect, the naturalized Italian tries to become a good [Page 104] citizen, and adjust himself to the laws and the customs of his new country. Why should he not do this in regard to bird life? It is not too much to ask, nor is it too much to exact. Does the Italian workman, or store-keeper who makes his living by honest toil enjoy breaking our bird laws, enjoy irritating and injuring those with whom he has come to live? Does he enjoy being watched, and searched, and chased, and arrested,—all for a few small birds that he does not need for food? He earns good wages; he has plenty of good food; and he must be educated into protecting our birds instead of destroying them. The Italian newspapers and clergy have a serious duty to perform in this matter, and we hope they will diligently discharge it.

DEAD SONG-BIRDS

These jars contain the dead bodies of 43 valuable insectivorous birds that were taken from two Italians in October, 1905, in the suburbs of New York City, by game wardens of the New York Zoological Society.

Before going farther, there is one point that I wish to make quite clear.

Whenever the people of a particular race make a specialty of some particular type of wrong-doing, anyone who pointedly rebukes the faulty members of that race is immediately accused of "race prejudice." On account of the facts I am now setting forth about the doings of Italian and negro bird-killers, I expect to be accused along that line. If I am, I shall strenuously deny the charge. The facts speak for themselves. Zoologically, however, I am strongly prejudiced against the people of any race, creed, club, state or nation who make a specialty of any particularly offensive type of bird or wild animal slaughter; and I do not care who knows it.

The time was, and I remember it very well, when even the poorest gunner scorned to kill birds that were not considered "game." In days lang syne, many a zoological collector has been jeered because the specimens he had killed for preservation were not "game."

But times have changed. In the wearing of furs, we have bumped down steps both high and steep. In 1880 American women wore sealskin, marten, otter, beaver and mink. To-day nothing that wears hair is too humble to be skinned and worn. To-day "they are wearing" skins of muskrats, foxes, rabbits, skunks, domestic cats, squirrels, and even rats. And see how the taste for game,—of some sections of our population,—also has gone down.

In the North, the Italians are fighting for the privilege of eating everything that wears feathers; but we allow no birds to be shot for food save game birds and cranes. In the South, the negroes and poor whites are killing song-birds, woodpeckers and doves for food; and in several states some of it is done under the authority of the laws. Look at these awful lists:

In Mississippi, the cedar bird is legally shot and eaten!

In North Carolina, the meadow lark is shot and eaten.

The killing of doves represents a great and widespread decline in the ethics of sportsmanship. In the twenty-six States named, a great many men who call themselves sportsmen indulge in the cheap and ignoble pastime of potting weak and confiding doves. It is on a par with the "sport" of hunting English sparrows in a city street. Of course this is, to a certain extent, a matter of taste; but there is at least one club of sportsmen into which no dove-killer can enter, provided his standard of ethics is known in advance.

With the killing of robins, larks, blackbirds and cedar birds for food, the case is quite different. No white man calling himself a sportsman ever indulges in such low pastimes as the killing of such birds for food. That burden of disgrace rests upon the negroes and poor whites of the South; but at the same time, it is a shame that respectable white men sitting in state legislatures should deliberately enact laws permitting such disgraceful practices, or permit such disgraceful and ungentlemanly laws to remain in force!

Here is a case by way of illustration, copied very recently from the Atlanta Journal:

Dallas, Texas, papers and Oklahoma papers, please copy!

THE ROBIN OF THE NORTH Our best-beloved Song Bird, now being legally shot as "game" in the South. In the North there is now only one robin for every ten formerly there.

As a further illustration of the spirit manifested in the South toward robins, I quote the following story from Dr. P.P. Claxton, of the University of Tennessee, as related in Audubon Educational Leaflet No. 46, by Mr. T. Gilbert Pearson:—

"The roost to which I refer," says Professor Claxton, "was situated in what is locally known as a 'cedar glade,' near Porestville, Bedford Co., Tennessee. This is a great cedar country, and robins used to come in immense numbers during the winter months, to feed on the berries.

"The spot which the roost occupied was not unlike numerous others that might have been selected. The trees grew to a height of from five to thirty feet, and for a mile square were literally loaded at night with robins. Hunting them while they roosted was a favorite sport. A man would climb a cedar tree with a torch, while his companions with poles and clubs would disturb the sleeping birds on the adjacent trees. Blinded by the light, the suddenly awakened birds flew to the torch-bearer; who, as he seized each bird would quickly pull off its head, and drop it into a sack suspended from his shoulders.

THE MOCKING-BIRD OF THE SOUTH This sweet singer of the South is NOT being shot in the North for food! No northern lawmaker ever will permit such barbarity.

"The capture of three of four hundred birds was an ordinary night's work. Men and boys would come in wagons from all the adjoining counties and camp near the roost for the purpose of killing robins. Many times, [Page 108] 100 or more hunters with torches and clubs would be at work in a single night. For three years this tremendous slaughter continued in winter,—and then the survivors deserted the roost."

No: these people were not Apache Indians, led by a Geronimo who knew no mercy, no compassion. We imagine that they were mostly poor white trash, of Tennessee. One small hamlet sent to market annually enough dead robins to return $500 at five cents per dozen; which means 120,000 birds!

Last winter Mr. Edward A. McIlhenny of Avery Island, La. (south of New Iberia) informed me that every winter, during the two weeks that the holly berries are ripe thousands of robins come to his vicinity to feed upon them. "Then every negro man and boy who can raise a gun is after them. About 10,000 robins are slaughtered each day while they remain. Their dead bodies are sold in New Iberia at 10 cents each." The accompanying illustrations taken by Mr. McIlhenny shows 195 robins on one tree, and explains how such great slaughter is possible.

NORTHERN ROBINS READY FOR SOUTHERN SLAUGHTER

195 Birds at Avery Island, La. in January 1912, Photographed Daring the Annual Slaughter, by E.A. McIlhenny

An officer of the Louisiana Audubon Society states that a conservative [Page 109] estimate of the number of robins annually killed in Louisiana for food purposes when they are usually plentiful, is a quarter of a million!

The food of the robin is as follows:

Insects, 40 per cent; wild fruit, 43 per cent; cultivated fruit, 8 per cent, miscellaneous vegetable food, 5 per cent.

Special Work Of The Southern Negroes. —In 1912 a female colored servant who recently had arrived from country life in Virginia chanced to remark to me at our country home in the middle of August: "I wish I could find some birds' nests!"

"What for?" I asked, rather puzzled.

"Why, to get the aigs and eat 'em!" she responded with a bright smile and flashing teeth.

"Do you eat the eggs of wild birds?"

"Yes indeed! It's fine to get a pattridge nest! From them we nearly always git a whole dozen of aigs at once,—back where I live, in Virginia."

"Do the colored people of Virginia make a practice of hunting for the eggs of wild birds, and eating them?"

"Yes, indeed we do. In the spring and summer, when the birds are around, we used to get out every Sunday, and hunt all day. Some days we'd come back with a whole bucket full of aigs; and then we'd set up half the night, cookin' and eatin' 'em. They was awful good!"

Her face fairly beamed at the memory of it.

A few days later, this story of the doings of Virginia negroes was fully corroborated by a colored man who came from another section of that state. Three months later, after special inquiries made at my request, a gentleman of Richmond obtained further corroboration, from negroes. He was himself much surprised by the state of fact that was revealed to him.

In the North, the economic value of our song birds and other destroyers of insects and weed seeds is understood by a majority of the people, and as far as possible those birds are protected from all human enemies. But in the South, a new division of the Army of Destruction has risen into deadly prominence.

In Recreation Magazine for May, 1909, Mr. Charles Askins published a most startling and illuminating article, entitled "The South's Problem in Game Protection." It brought together in concrete form and with eye-witness reliability the impressions that for months previous had been gaining ground in the North. In order to give the testimony of a man who has seen what he describes, I shall now give numerous quotations from Mr. Askins' article, which certainly bears the stamp of truthfulness, without any "race prejudice" whatever. It is a calm, judicial, unemotional analysis of a very bad situation: and I particularly commend it alike to the farmers of the North and all the true sportsmen of the South.

In his opening paragraphs Mr. Askins describes game and hunting conditions in the South as they were down to twenty years ago, when the negroes were too poor to own guns, and shooting was not for them.

Reproduced from Recreation Magazine. By permission of the Outdoor World.

THE SOUTHERN-NEGRO METHOD OF COMBING OUT THE WILD LIFE

"Our colored sportsman is gregarious at all times, but especially so in the matter of recreation. He may slouch about alone, and pot a bevy or two of quail when in actual need of something to eat, or when he has a sale for the birds, but when it comes to shooting for fun he wants to be with the 'gang'."—Charles Askins.

Mr. Askins has fairly stated a profoundly disturbing case. The remedy must contain at least three ingredients. The sportsmen of the South must stop the unjustifiable slaughter of their non-migratory game birds. As a matter of comity between states, the gentlemen of the South must pass laws to stop the killing of northern song-birds and all crop-protecting birds, for food. Finally, all men, North and South, East and West, must unite in the work that is necessary to secure the immediate enactment by Congress of a law for the federal protection of all migratory birds.

It is high time for the whole civilized world to know that many of the most beautiful and remarkable birds of the world are now being exterminated to furnish millinery ornaments for women's wear. The mass of new information that we have recently secured on this traffic from the headquarters of the feather trade is appalling. Previously, I had not dreamed that conditions are half as bad as they are.

It is entirely fitting that on this subject New York should send a message to London. New York is almost a Spotless Town in plume-free millinery, and London and Paris are the worst places in the world. We have cleaned house. With but extremely slight exceptions, the blood of the slaughtered innocents is no longer upon our skirts, and on the subject of plumage millinery we have a right to be just as Pharisaical as we choose.

Here in New York (and also in New Jersey) no man may sell, own for sale or offer for sale the plumage of any wild American bird other than a game bird. More than that, the plumage of no foreign bird belonging to any bird family represented in the fauna of North America can be sold here! There are only a few kinds of improper "millinery" feathers that it is possible to sell here under the law. Thanks to the long and arduous campaign of the National Association of Audubon Societies, founded and for ten years directed by gallant William Dutcher, you now see on the streets of New York very, very little wild-bird plumage save that from game birds.

It is true that a few servant girls are now wearing the cast-off aigrettes of their mistresses; but they are only as one in a thousand. At Atlantic City there is said to be a fine display of servant-girl and ladies-maid aigrettes. In New York and New Jersey, in Pennsylvania for everything save the sale of heron and egret plumes (a privilege obtained by a bunko game), in Massachusetts, and in many other of our States, the wild-birds'-plumage millinery business is dead. Two years ago, when the New York legislature refused to repeal the Dutcher law, the Millinery Association asserted, and brought a cloud of witnesses to Albany to prove, that the enforcement of the law would throw thousands of operatives out of employment.

BEAUTIFUL AND CURIOUS BIRDS NOW BEING DESTROYED FOR THE FEATHER TRADE—(I)

The law is in effect; and the aigrette business is dead in this state. Have any operatives starved, or been thrown out of employment? We have heard of none. They are now at work making very pretty hat ornaments of silk and ribbons, and gauze and lace; and "They are wearing them."

1600 HUMMINGBIRD SKINS AT 2 CENTS EACH!

Part of Lot Purchased by the Zoological Society at the Regular Quarterly London Millinery Feather Sale, August, 1912.

But even while these words are being written, there is one large fly in the ointment. The store-window of E. &. S. Meyers, 688 Broadway, New York, contains about six hundred plumes and skins of birds of paradise for sale for millinery purposes. No wonder the great bird of paradise is now almost extinct! Their sale here is possible because the Dutcher law protects from the feather dealers only the birds that belong to avian families represented in the United States. With fiendish cunning and enterprise, the shameless feather dealers are ferreting out the birds whose skins and plumes may legally be imported into this country [Page 117] and sold; but we will meet that with a law that will protect all foreign birds, so far as we are concerned. Now it is time for the universal enactment of a law which will prohibit the sale and use as ornaments of the plumage, feathers or skins of any wild bird that is not a legitimate game bird.

London is now the head of the giant octopus of the "feather trade" that has reached out its deadly tentacles into the most remote wildernesses of the earth, and steadily is drawing in the "skins" and "plumes" and "quills" of the most beautiful and most interesting unprotected birds of the world. The extent of this cold-blooded industry, supported by vain and hard-hearted women, will presently be shown in detail. Paris is the great manufacturing center of feather trimming and ornaments, and the French people obstinately refuse to protect the birds from extermination, because their slaughter affords employment to a certain numbers of French factory operatives.

All over the world where they have real estate possessions, the men of England know how to protect game from extermination. The English are good at protecting game—when they decide to set about it.

Why should London be the Mecca of the feather-killers of the world?

It is easily explained:

(1) London has the greatest feather market in the world; (2) the feather industry "wants the money"; and (3) the London feather industry is willing to spend money in fighting to retain its strangle-hold on the unprotected birds of the world.

Let us run through a small portion of the mass of fresh evidence before us. It will be easier for the friends of birds to read these details here than to procure them at first hand, as we have done.

The first thing that strikes one is the fact that the feather-hunters are scattered all over the world where bird life is plentiful and there are no laws to hinder their work. I commend to every friend of birds this list of the species whose plumage is to-day being bought and sold in large quantities every year in London. To the birds of the world this list is of deadly import, for it spells extermination.

The reader will notice that it is the way of the millinery octopus to reach out to the uttermost ends of the earth, and take everything that it can use. From the trackless jungles of New Guinea, round the world both ways to the snow-capped peaks of the Andes, no unprotected bird is safe. The humming-birds of Brazil, the egrets of the world at large, the rare birds of paradise, the toucan, the eagle, the condor and the emu, all are being exterminated to swell the annual profits of the millinery trade. The case is far more serious than the world at large knows, or even suspects. But for the profits, the birds would be safe; and no unprotected wild species can long escape the hounds of Commerce.

But behold the list of rare, curious and beautiful birds that are today in grave peril:

BEAUTIFUL AND CURIOUS BIRDS NOW BEING DESTROYED FOR THE FEATHER TRADE—(II)

In order to throw a spot-light on the most recent transactions in the London wild-birds'-plumage market, and to furnish a clear idea of what is to-day going on in London, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam, I will set out in some detail the report of an agent whom I engaged to ascertain the London dealings in the plumage of wild birds that were killed especially to furnish that plumage. As one item, let us take the sales in London in February, May and October, 1911, because they bring the subject well down to date. My agent's explanatory note is as follows:

"These three sales represent six months. Very nearly double this quantity is sold by these four firms in a year. We must also take into consideration that all the feathers are not brought to the London market, and that very large shipments are also made direct to the raw-feather dealers and manufacturers of Paris and Berlin, and that Amsterdam also gets large quantities from the West Indies. For your purpose, I report upon three sales, at different periods of the year 1911, and as those sales do not vary much, you will be able to judge the consumption of birds in a year."

The "aigrettes" of the feather trade come from egrets, and, being very light, it requires the death of several birds to yield one ounce. In many catalogues, the word "albatross" stands for the jabiru, a nearly-exterminated species of giant stork, inhabiting South America. "Rhea" often stands for vulture plumage.

If the feather dealers had deliberately attempted to form an educational list of the most beautiful and the most interesting birds of the world, they could hardly have done better than they have done in the above list. If it were in my power to show the reader a colored plate of each species now being exterminated by the feather trade, he would be startled by the exhibit. That the very choicest birds of the whole avian world should be thus blotted out at the behest of vain and heartless women is a shame, a disgrace and world-wide loss.

If I am correctly informed, the London feather trade admits that it requires six egrets to yield one "ounce" of aigrette plumes. This being the case, the 21,528 ounces sold as above stand for 129,168 egrets killed for nine months' supply of egret plumes, for London alone.

The total number of bird corpses auctioned during these three sales is as follows:

It is to be remembered that the sales listed above cover the transactions of four firms only, and do not in any manner take into account the direct importations from Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam of manufacturers and other dealers. The defenders of the feather trade are at great pains to assure the world that in the monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly sales, feathers often appear in the market twice in the same year; and this statement is made for them in order to be absolutely fair. Recent examinations of the plume catalogues for an entire year, marked with the price paid for each item, reveals very few which are blank, indicating no sale! The subtractions of the duplicated items would alter the result only very slightly.

The full extent of England's annual consumption of the plumage of wild birds slaughtered especially for the trade never has been determined. I doubt whether it is possible to ascertain it. The information that we have is so fragmentary that in all probability it reflects only a small portion of the whole truth, but for all that, it is sufficient to prove the case of the Defenders of the Birds vs. the London Chamber of Commerce.

The above does not take into account the feathers from game birds received in England from France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium and the Netherlands.

As a final side-light on the quantity of egret and heron plumes offered and sold in London during the twelve months ending in April, 1912, we offer the following exhibit:

BEAUTIFUL AND CURIOUS BIRDS NOW BEING DESTROYED FOR THE FEATHER TRADE—(III)

Under the head of "Hummingbirds Not Wanted," Mr. Downham is at great pains to convey [F] the distinct impression that to-day hummingbirds are scorned by the feather trade, and the demand for them is dead. I believed him—until my agent turned in the following statement:

It is useless for anyone to assert that these birds were merely "offered," and not actually sold, as Mr. Downham so laboriously explains is the regular course with hummingbird skins; for that will deceive no intelligent person. The statement published above comes to me direct, from an absolutely competent and reliable source.

Undoubtedly the friends of birds, and likewise their enemies, will be interested in the prices at which the skins of the most beautiful birds of the world are sold in London, prior to their annihilation by the feather industry. I submit the following exhibit, copied from the circular of Messrs. Lewis & Peat. It is at least of academic interest.

Many thoughts are suggested by these London lists of bird slaughter and loot.

It will be noticed that the breast of the grebe has almost wholly disappeared from the feather market and from women's hats. The reason is that there are no longer enough birds of that group to hold a place in the London market! Few indeed are the Americans who know that from 1900 to 1908 the lake region of southern Oregon was the scene of the slaughter of uncountable thousands of those birds, which continued until the grebes were almost exterminated.

When the wonderful lyre-bird of Australia had been almost exterminated for its tail feathers, its open slaughter was stopped by law, and a heavy fine was imposed on exportation, amounting, I have been told, to $250 for each offense. My latest news of the lyre-bird was of the surreptitious exportation of 200 skins to the London feather market.

In India, the smuggling outward of the skins of protected birds is constantly going on. Occasionally an exporter is caught and fined; but that does not stop the traffic.

Bird-lovers must now bid farewell forever to all the birds of paradise. Nothing but the legal closing of the world's markets against their plumes and skins can save any of them. They never were numerous; nor does any species range over a wide area. They are strictly insular, and the island homes of some of them are very small. Take the great bird of paradise (Paradisea apoda) as an illustration. On Oct. 2, 1912, at Indianapolis, Indiana, a city near the center of the United States, in three show-windows within 100 feet of the headquarters of the Fourth National Conservation Congress, I counted 11 stuffed heads and 11 complete sets of plumes of this bird, displayed for sale. The prices ranged from $30 to $47.50 each! And while I looked, a large lady approached, pointed her finger at the remains of a greater bird of paradise, and with grim determination, said to her shopping companion: "There! I want one o' them, an' I'm agoin' to have it, too!"

Says Mr. James Buckland in "Pros and Cons of the Plumage Bill":

"Mr. Goodfellow has returned within the last few weeks from a second expedition to new Guinea.... One can now walk, he states, miles and miles through the former haunts of these birds [of paradise] without [Page 126] seeing or hearing even the commonest species. When I reflect on this sacrilege, I am lost in wonder at the apathy of the British public."

Mr. Carl Hagenbeck wrote me only three months ago that "the condors of the Andes are all being exterminated for their feathers, and these birds are now very difficult to obtain."

The egret and heron plumes, known under the trade name of "osprey, etc., feathers," form by far the most important item in each feather sale. There are fifteen grades! They are sold by the ounce, and the prices range all the way from twenty-eight cents per ounce for "mixed heron" to two hundred and twenty-five shillings ($45.60) per ounce for the best Brazilian "short selected," on February 7, 1912! Is it any wonder that in Philadelphia the prices of finished aigrettes, ready to be worn, runs from $20 to $125!

The plumes that run up into the big figures are the "short selected" coming from the following localities, and quoted at the prices set down here in shillings and pence. Count the shilling at twenty-four cents, United States money.

The total offering of these "short selected" plumes in December 1911, was 689 ounces, and in February, 1912, it was 230 ounces.

Now with these enormous prices prevailing, is it any wonder that the egrets and herons are being relentlessly pursued to the uttermost ends of the earth? I think that any man who really knows the habits of egrets and herons, and the total impossibility of any quantity of their shed feathers being picked up in a marketable state, must know in his heart that if the London and continental feather markets keep open a few years longer, every species that furnishes "short selected" plumes will be utterly exterminated from off the face of the earth.

Let the English people make no mistake about this, nor be fooled by any fairy tales of the feather trade about Venezuelan "garceros," and vast quantities of valuable plumes picked off the bushes and out of the mud. Those carefully concocted egret-farm stories make lovely reading, but the reader who examines the evidence will soon decide the extent of their truthfulness. I think that they contain not even ten per cent of truth; and I shall not rest until the stories of Leon Laglaize and Mayeul Grisol have been put to the test in the regions where they originated.

A few plumes may be picked out of the jungle, yes; but as for any commercial quantity, it is at present beyond belief. Besides, we have direct, eye-witness testimony to the contrary.

It must not be inferred that the friends of birds in England have been idle or silent in the presence of the London feather trade. On the contrary, the Royal Society for the Protection of Wild Birds and Mr. James Buckland have so strongly attacked the feather industry that the London Chamber of Commerce has felt called upon to come to its rescue. Mr. Buckland, on his own individual account, has done yeoman service to the cause, and his devotion to the birds, and his tireless energy, are both almost beyond the reach of praise in words. At the last moment before going to press I learn that the birds'-plumage bill has achieved the triumph of a "first reading" in Parliament, which looks as if success is at last in sight. The powerful pamphlet that he has written, published and circulated at his own expense, entitled "Pros and Cons of the Plumage Bill," is a splendid effort. What a pity it is that more individuals are not similarly inspired to make independent effort in the protection cause! But, strange to say, few indeed are the men who have either the nerve or the ability to "go it alone."

On the introduction in Parliament of the bill to save the birds from the feather trade, it was opposed (through the efforts of the Chamber of Commerce), on the ground that if any bill against the sale of plumes should pass, and plumes could not be sold, the London business in wild-bird skins and feathers "would immediately be transferred to the continent!"

In the face of that devastating and altogether horrible prospect, and because the London feather dealers "need the money," the bill was at first defeated—to the great joy of the Chamber of Commerce and Mr. Downham; but the cause of birds will win in the end, because it is Right.

The feather dealers have been shrewdly active in the defense of their trade, and the methods they have employed for influencing public opinion have quite outshone those put forth by their brethren in America. I have before me a copy of a booklet bearing the name of Mr. C.F. Downham as the author, and the London Chamber of Commerce has loaned its good name as publisher. Altogether it is a very shrewd piece of work, even though its arguments in justification of bird slaughter for the feather market are too absurd and weak for serious consideration.

The chief burden of the defender of bird slaughter for millinery purposes is on account of the destruction of egrets and herons, but particularly the former. To offset as far as possible the absolutely true charge that egrets bear their best plumes in their breeding season, when the helpless young are in the nest and the parent birds must be killed to obtain the plumes, the feather trade has obtained from three Frenchmen—Leon Laglaize, Mayeul Grisol, and F. Geay—a beautiful and plausible story to the effect that in Venezuela the enormous output of egret plumes has been obtained by picking up, off the bushes and out of the water and mud, the shed feathers of those birds! According to the story, Venezuela is full of egret farms, called "garceros,"—where the birds breed and moult under strict supervision, and kindly drop their feathers in such places that it is possible to find them, and to pick [Page 128] them up, in a high state of preservation! And we are asked to believe that it is these very Venezuelan picked-up feathers that command in London the high price of $44 per ounce.

THE FIGHT IN ENGLAND AGAINST THE USE OF WILD BIRD'S PLUMAGE IN THE MILLINERY TRADE

Sandwich-men Employed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, that Patroled London Streets in July, 1911.

Mr. Laglaize is especially exploited by Mr. Downham, as a French traveler of high standing, and well known in the zoological museums of France; but, sad to say, when Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn cabled to the Museum of Natural History in Paris, inquiring about Mr. Laglaize, the cable flashed back the one sad word; "Inconnu!" (Unknown!)

I think it entirely possible that enough shed feathers have been picked up in the reeking swamps of Venezuela, on the upper tributaries of the Orinoco, to afford an excuse for the beautiful story of Mr. Laglaize. Any shrewd individual with money, and the influence that money secures, could put up just such a "plant" as I firmly believe has been put up by some one in Venezuela. I will guarantee that I could accomplish such a job in Venezuela or Brazil, in four months' time, at an expense not exceeding one thousand dollars.

That the great supply of immaculately perfect egret plumes that annually come out of Venezuela could by any possibility be picked up in the [Page 129] swamps where they were shed and dropped by the egrets, is entirely preposterous and incredible. The whole proportion is denounced by several men of standing and experience, none of whom are "inconnu."

As a sweeping refutation of the fantastic statements regarding "garceros," published by Mr. Downham as coming from Messrs. Laglaize, Grisol and Geay, I offer the written testimony of an American gentleman who at this moment owns and maintains within a few yards of his residence a large preserve of snowy egrets and herons, the former representing the species which furnishes egret plumes exactly similar to those shipped from Venezuela and Brazil. If the testimony of Mr. McIlhenny is not sufficient to stamp the statements of the three Frenchmen quoted by Mr. Downham as absolute and thoroughly misleading falsehoods, then there is no such thing in this world as evidence. I suggest a perusal of the statements of the three Frenchmen who are quoted with such confidence by Mr. Downham and published by the Hon. Chamber of Commerce at London, and then a careful reading of the following letter:

Avery Island, La., June 17, 1912.

Dear Mr. Hornaday:—

I have before me your letter of June 8th, asking for information as to whether or no egrets shed their plumes at their nesting places in sufficient quantities to enable them to be gathered commercially. I most emphatically wish to state that it is impossible to gather at the nesting places of these birds any quantity of their plumes. I have nesting within 50 yards of where I am now sitting dictating this letter not less than 20,000 pairs of the various species of herons and egrets, and there are fully 2,500 pairs of snowy herons nesting within my preserve.

During the nesting season, which covers the months of April, May and June, I am through this heronry in a small canoe almost every day, and often twice a day. I have had these herons under my close inspection for the past 17 years, and I have not in any one season picked up or seen more than half a dozen discarded plumes. Such plumes as I have picked up, I have kept on my desk, and given to the people who were interested. I remember that last year I picked up four plumes of the snowy heron that were in one bunch. I think these must have been plucked out by the birds fighting.

This year I have found only one plume so far. I enclose it herewith. You will notice that it is one of the shorter plumes, and is badly worn at the end, as have been all the plumes which I have picked up in my heronry.

I am positive that it is not possible for natural shed plumes to be gathered commercially. I have a number of times talked with plume hunters from Venezuela and other South American countries, and I have never heard of any egret feathers being gathered by their being picked up after the birds have shed them.

I have heard of a number of heronries in South America that are protected by the land owners for the purpose of gathering a yearly crop of egret plumes, but this crop is gathered always by shooting a certain percentage of the birds. This shooting is done by experts with 22-calibre rifles, and does not materially disturb the nesting colony. I have known of two men who have been engaged in killing the birds on large estates in South America, who were paid regular salaries for their services as egret hunters.

Very truly yours,

E.A. McIlhenny.

I am more than willing to set the above against the fairy tale of Mr. Laglaize.

Here is the testimony of A.H. Meyer, an ex-plume-hunter, who for nine [Page 130] years worked in Venezuela. His sworn testimony was laid before the Legislature of the State of New York, in 1911, when the New York Milliners' Association was frantically endeavoring to secure the repeal of the splendid Dutcher law. This witness was produced by the National Association of Audubon Societies.

"My attention has been called to the fact that certain commercial interests in this city are circulating stories in the newspapers and elsewhere to the effect that the aigrettes used in the millinery trade come chiefly from Venezuela, where they are gathered from the ground in the large garceros, or breeding-colonies, of white herons.

"I wish to state that I have personally engaged in the work of collecting the plumes of these birds in Venezuela. This was my business for the years 1896 to 1905, inclusive. I am thoroughly conversant with the methods employed in gathering egret and snowy heron plumes in Venezuela, and I wish to give the following statement regarding the practices employed in procuring these feathers:

"The birds gather in large colonies to rear their young. They have the plumes only during the mating and nesting season. After the period when they are employed in caring for their young, it is found that the plumes are virtually of no commercial value, because of the worn and frayed condition to which they have been reduced. It is the custom in Venezuela to shoot the birds while the young are in the nests. A few feathers of the large white heron (American egret), known as the Garza blanca, can be picked up of a morning about their breeding places, but these are of small value and are known as "dead feathers." They are worth locally not over three dollars an ounce; while the feathers taken from the bird, known as "live feathers," are worth fifteen dollars an ounce.

"My work led me into every part of Venezuela and Colombia where these birds are to be found, and I have never yet found or heard of any garceros that were guarded for the purpose of simply gathering the feathers from the ground. No such condition exists in Venezuela. The story is absolutely without foundation, in my opinion, and has simply been put forward for commercial purposes.

"The natives of the country, who do virtually all of the hunting for feathers, are not provident in their nature, and their practices are of a most cruel and brutal nature. I have seen them frequently pull the plumes from wounded birds, leaving the crippled birds to die of starvation, unable to respond to the cries of their young in the nests above, which were calling for food. I have known these people to tie and prop up wounded egrets on the marsh where they would attract the attention of other birds flying by. These decoys they keep in this position until they die of their wounds, or from the attacks of insects. I have seen the terrible red ants of that country actually eating out the eyes of these wounded, helpless birds that were tied up by the plume-hunters. I could write you many pages of the horrors practiced in gathering aigrette feathers in Venezuela by the natives for the millinery trade of Paris and New York.

"To illustrate the comparatively small number of dead feathers which are collected, I will mention that in one year I and my associates shipped to New York eighty pounds of the plumes of the large heron and twelve pounds of the little recurved plumes of the snowy heron. In this whole lot there were not over five pounds of plumes that had been gathered from the ground—and these were of little value. The plume-birds have been nearly exterminated in the United States and Mexico, and the same condition of affairs will soon exist in tropical America. This extermination will come about because of the fact that the young are left to starve in the nest when the old birds are killed, any other statement made by interested parties to the contrary notwithstanding.

"I am so incensed at the ridiculously absurd and misleading stories that are being published on this question that I want to give you this letter, and, before delivering it to you, shall take oath to its truthfulness."

Here is the testimony of Mr. Caspar Whitney, of New York, formerly editor of Outing Magazine and Outdoor America:

"During extended travel throughout South America, from 1903 to 1907, inclusive, I journeyed, on three separate occasions, by canoe (1904-1907), on the Lower Orinoco and Apure rivers and their tributaries. This is the region, so far as Venezuela is concerned, in which is the greatest slaughter of white herons for their plumage, or more specifically for the marital plumes, which are carried only in the mating and breeding season, and are known in the millinery trade as 'aigrettes.'

"There is literally no room for question. The snowy herons are killed exactly as I describe. It is the custom of all those who hunt for the millinery trade, and is recognized by the natives as the usual method."

Here is the testimony of Mr. Julian A. Dimock, of Peekamose, N.Y., the famous outdoor photographer, and illustrator of "Florida Enchantments":

"I know a goodly number of the plume-hunters of Florida. I have camped with them, and talked to them. I have heard their tales, and even full accounts of the 'shooting-up' of an egret rookery. Never has a man in Florida suggested to me that plumes could be obtained without killing the birds. I have known the wardens, and have visited rookeries after they had been 'shot-up,' and the evidence all pointed to the everlasting use of the gun. It is certainly not true that the plumes can be obtained without killing the birds bearing them.

"Nineteen years ago, I visited the Cuthbert Rookery with one of the men who discovered the birds nesting in that lake. He and his partner had sold the plumes gathered there for more than a thousand dollars. He showed me how they hid in the bushes and shot the birds. He even gave me a chance to watch him kill two or three birds.

"I know personally the man chiefly responsible for the slaughter of the birds at Alligator Bay. He laughed at the idea of getting plumes without killing the birds! I well know the man who shot the birds up Rogers River, and even saw some of the empty shells left on the ground by him.

YOUNG EGRETS, UNABLE TO FLY, STARVING

The Parent Birds had Been Killed by Plume Hunters

SNOWY EGRET, DEAD ON HER NEST

Wounded in the Feeding-Grounds, and Came Home to Die. Photographed in a Florida Rookery Protected by the National Association of Audubon Societies

I have camped with Seminoles, whites, blacks, outlaws, and those within the pale, connected with plume-hunting, and all tell the same story: The birds are shot to get the plumes. The evidence of my own eyes, and the action of the birds themselves, convinces me that there is not a shadow of doubt concerning this point."

This sworn testimony from Mr. T.J. Ashe, of Key West, Florida, is very direct and to the point:

"I have seen many moulted and dropped feathers from wild plumed birds. I have never seen a moulted or dropped feather that was fit for anything. It is the exception when a plumed bird drops feathers of any value while in flight. Whatever feathers are so dropped are those that are frayed, worn out, and forced out by the process of moulting. The moulting season is not during the hatching season, but is after the hatching season. The shedding, or moulting, takes place once a year; and during this moulting season the feathers, after having the hard usage of the year from wind, rain and other causes, when dropped are of absolutely no commercial value."

Mr. Arthur T. Wayne, of Mount Pleasant, S.C., relates in sworn testimony his experience in attempting to secure egret plumes without killing the birds:

"It is utterly impossible to get fifty egret plumes from any colony of breeding birds without shooting the birds. Last spring, I went twice a week to a breeding colony of American and snowy egrets, from early in April until June 8. Despite the fact that I covered miles of territory in a boat, I picked up but two American egret plumes (which I now have); but not a single snowy egret plume did I see, nor did my companion, who accompanied me on every trip.

"I saw an American egret plume on the water, and left it, purposely, to see whether it would sink or not. Upon visiting the place a few days afterwards, the plume was not in evidence, undoubtedly having sunk. The plumes are chiefly shed in the air while the birds are going to or coming from their breeding grounds. If that millinery plume law is repealed, the fate of the American and snowy egrets is sealed, for the few birds that remain will be shot to the very last one."

Any man who ever has been in an egret rookery (and I have) knows that the above testimony is true! The French story of the beautiful and smoothly-running egret farms in Venezuela is preposterous, save for a mere shadow of truth. I do not say that no egret plumes could be picked up, but I do assert that the total quantity obtainable in one year in that way would be utterly trivial.

No; the "ospreys" of the British feather market come from slaughtered egrets and herons, killed in the breeding season. Let the British public and the British Parliament make no mistake about that. If they wish the trade to continue, let it be based on the impregnable ground that the merchants want the money, and not on a fantastic dream that is too silly to deceive even a child that knows birds.

The use or disuse of wild birds' plumage as millinery ornaments is another of those wild-life subjects regarding which there is no room for argument. To assert that the feather-dealers want the business for the money it brings them is not argument! We have seen many a steam roller go over Truth, and Right, and Justice, by main strength and red-hot power; but Truth and Right refuse to stay flat down. There is on this earth not one wild-animal species—mammal, bird or reptile—that can long withstand exploitation for commercial purposes. Even the whales of the deep sea, the walrus of the arctic regions, the condors of the Andes and alligators of the Everglade morasses are no exception to the universal rule.

In Mr. Downham's book there is much fallacious reasoning, and many conclusions that are not borne out by the facts. For example, he says that no species of bird of paradise has been diminished in number by slaughter for the feather trade; that Florida still contains a supply of egrets; that the decrease in bird life should be charged to the spread of cities, towns and farms, and not to the trade; that the trade was "in no way responsible" for the slaughter of three hundred thousand gulls and albatrosses on Laysan Island!

I have space to notice one other important erroneous conclusion that Mr. Downham publishes in his book, on page 105. He says:

"The destruction of birds in foreign countries is something that no trade can direct or control."

This is an amazing declaration; and absolutely contrary to experience. Let me prove what I say by a fresh and incontestable illustration:

Prior to April, 1911, when Governor Dix signed the Bayne law against the sale of wild native game in the State of New York, Currituck County, N.C., was a vast slaughter-pen for wild fowl. No power or persuasion had availed to induce the people of North Carolina to check, or regulate, or in any manner mitigate that slaughter of geese, ducks and swans. It was estimated that two hundred thousand wild fowl were annually slaughtered there.

We who advocated the Bayne law said: "Close the New York markets against Currituck birds, and you will stop a great deal of the slaughter."

We cleaned our Augean stable. The greatest game market in America was absolutely closed.

Last winter (1911) the annual killing of wild fowl was fully fifty per cent less than during previous years. In one small town, twenty professional duck shooters went entirely out of business—because they couldn't sell their ducks! The dealers refused to buy them. The result was exactly what we predicted it would be; and this year, it is reported over and over that ducks are more plentiful in New England than they have been in twenty years previously! The result is wonderful, because so quick.

Beyond all question, the feather merchants of London, Paris and Berlin absolutely control the bird-killers of Venezuela, China, New Guinea. Mexico and South America. Let the word go forth that "the trade" is no longer permitted to buy and sell egret and heron plumes, skins of birds of paradise and condor feathers, and presto! the killing industry falls dead the next moment.

MISCELLANEOUS BIRD SKINS, 8 CENTS EACH

Purchased by the New York Zoological Society from the Quarterly Sale in London, August, 1912

Yes, indeed, members of the British Parliament: it is easily within your power to wipe out at a single stroke fully one-half of the bird slaughter for fancy feathers. It can be done just as we wiped out one-half the annual duck slaughter in wickedly-wasteful North Carolina!

The feather trade absolutely does control the killing situation! Now, will the people of England clean house by controlling the feather trade? If a hundred species of the most beautiful birds of the world must be exterminated for the feather trade, let the odium rest elsewhere than on the people of England.

The bird-lovers of America may rest assured that the bird-lovers of England—a mighty host—are neither careless nor indifferent regarding the wild-birds' plumage business. On the contrary, several bills have been brought before Parliament intended to regulate or prohibit the traffic, and a measure of vast importance to the birds of the world is now before the House of Commons. It is backed by Mr. Percy Alden, M.P., by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, by the Selbourne Society, and by Mr. James Buckland—a host in himself. For years past that splendidly-equipped and well-managed Royal Society has waged [Page 136] ceaseless warfare for the birds. Its activity has been tremendous, and its membership list contains many of the finest names in England. The address of the Honorary Secretary, Frank E. Lemon, Esq., is 23 Queen Anne's Gate, London, S.W.

Naturally, these influences are opposed by the Textile Trade Section of the London Chamber of Commerce, and their only argument consists of the plea that if London doesn't get the money out of the feather trade, the Continent will get it! A reasonable, logical, magnificent and convincing excuse for wholesale bird slaughter, truly!

Mr. Buckland has been informed from the Continent that the people of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are waiting and watching to see what England is going to do with the question, "To slaughter, or not to slaughter?" For England has no monopoly of the birds' plumage trade, not by any means. Says Mr. Buckland ("Pros and Cons of the Plumage Bill," page 17):

"As regards the vast majority of fancy feathers used in millinery, the Continent receives its own supplies. The feathers of the hundreds of thousands of albatrosses which are killed in the North Pacific all go to Paris. Of the untold thousands of 'magpies,' owls, and other species which come from Peru, not one skin or feather crosses the Channel. The white herons of the Upper Senegal and the Niger are being rapidly exterminated at the instigation of the feather merchants, but not one of the plumes reaches London. Paris receives direct a large supply of aigrettes from South America and elsewhere. … The millions of swallows and other migratory birds which are killed annually as they pass through Italy, France and Spain on their way north, supply the millinery trade of Europe with an incredible quantity of wings and other plumage, but none of it is distributed from London. … London, as a distributing center, has no monopoly of the trade in raw feathers."

Mr. Buckland's green-covered pamphlet is a powerful document, and both his facts and his conclusions seem to be unassailable. The author's address is Royal Colonial Institute, Northumberland Ave., London, W.C.

The duty of the civilized nations of Europe is perfectly plain. The savage and bloody business in feathers torn from wild birds should be stopped, completely and forever. If the commons will not arise and reform the odious business out of existence, then the kings and queens and presidents should do their plain duty. In the suppression of a world crime like this it is clearly a case of noblesse oblige!

This chapter is a curtain-dropper to the preceding chapter. As a clearly-cut, concrete case, the reader will find it unique and unsurpassed. It should be of lively interest to every American because the tragedy occurred on American territory.

In the far-away North Pacific Ocean, about seven hundred miles from Honolulu west-b'-north, lies the small island of Laysan. It is level, sandy, poorly planted by nature, and barren of all things likely to enlist the attention of predatory man. To the harassed birds of mid-ocean, it seemed like a secure haven, and for ages past it has been inhabited only by them. There several species of sea birds, large and small, have found homes and breeding places. Until 1909, the inhabitants consisted of the Laysan albatross, black-footed albatross, sooty tern, gray-backed tern, noddy tern, Hawaiian tern, white tern, Bonin petrel, two shearwaters, the red-tailed tropic bird, two boobies and the man-of-war bird.

Laysan Island is two miles long by one and one-half miles broad, and at times it has been literally covered with birds. Its bird life was first brought prominently to notice in 1891, by Henry Palmer, the agent of Hon. Walter Rothschild, and in 1902 and 1903 Walter K. Fisher and W.A. Bryan made further observations.

Ever since 1891 the bird life on Laysan has been regarded as one of the wonders of the bird world. One of the photographs taken prior to 1909 shows a vast plain, apparently a square mile in area, covered and crowded with Laysan albatrosses. They stand there on the level sand, serene, bulky and immaculate. Thousands of birds appear in one view—a very remarkable sight.

Naturally man, the ever-greedy, began to cast about for ways by which to convert some product of that feathered host into money. At first guano and eggs were collected. A tramway was laid down and small box-cars were introduced, in which the collected material was piled and pushed down to the packing place.

For several years this went on, and the birds themselves were not molested. At last, however, a tentacle of the feather-trade octopus reached out to Laysan. In an evil moment in the spring of 1909, a predatory individual of Honolulu and elsewhere, named Max Schlemmer, decided that the wings of those albatross, gulls and terns should be torn off and sent to Japan, whence they would undoubtedly be shipped to Paris, the special market for the wings of sea-birds slaughtered in the North Pacific.

By the Courtesy of Hon. Walter Rothschild

LAYSAN ALBATROSSES, BEFORE THE GREAT SLAUGHTER

LAYSAN ALBATROSS ROOKERY, AFTER THE GREAT SLAUGHTER

The Same Ground as Shown in the Preceding Picture, Photographed in 1911 by Prof. Homer R. Dill

Schlemmer the Slaughterer bought a cheap vessel, hired twenty-three phlegmatic and cold-blooded Japanese laborers, and organized a raid on Laysan. With the utmost secrecy he sailed from Honolulu, landed his bird-killers upon the sea-bird wonderland, and turned them loose upon the birds.

For several months they slaughtered diligently and without mercy. Apparently it was the ambition of Schlemmer to kill every bird on the island.

By the time the bird-butchers had accumulated between three and four car-loads of wings, and the carnage was half finished, William A. Bryan, Professor of Zoology in the College of Honolulu, heard of it and promptly wired the United States Government.

Without the loss of a moment the Secretary of the Navy despatched the revenue cutter Thetis to the shambles of Laysan. When Captain Jacobs arrived he found that in round numbers about three hundred thousand birds had been destroyed, and all that remained of them were several acres of bones and dead bodies, and about three carloads of wings, feathers and skins. It was evident that Schlemmer's intention was to kill all the birds on the island, and only the timely arrival of the Thetis frustrated that bloody plan.

The twenty-three Japanese poachers were arrested and taken to Honolulu for trial, and the Thetis also brought away all the stolen wings and plumage with the exception of one shedful of wings that had to be left [Page 140] behind on account of lack of carrying space. That old shed, with one end torn out, and supposed to contain nearly fifty thousand pairs of wings, was photographed by Prof. Dill in 1911, as shown herewith.

ACRES OF GULL AND ALBATROSS BONES

Photographed on Laysan Island by H.R. Dill, 1911

Three hundred thousand albatrosses, gulls, terns and other birds were butchered to make a Schlemmer holiday! Had the arrival of the Thetis been delayed, it is reasonably certain that every bird on Laysan would have been killed to satisfy the wolfish rapacity of one money-grubbing white man.

In 1911, the Iowa State University despatched to Laysan a scientific expedition in charge of Prof. Homer R. Dill. The party landed on the island on April 24 and remained until June 5, and the report of Professor Dill (U.S. Department of Agriculture) is consumedly interesting to the friends of birds. Here is what he has said regarding the evidences of bird-slaughter:

"Our first impression of Laysan was that the poachers had stripped the place of bird life. An area of over 300 acres on each side of the buildings was apparently abandoned. Only the shearwaters moaning in their burrows, the little wingless rail skulking from one grass tussock to another, and the saucy finch remained. It is an excellent example of what Prof. Nutting calls the survival of the inconspicuous.

"Here on every side are bones bleaching in the sun, showing where the poachers had piled the bodies of the birds as they stripped them of wings and feathers. In the old open guano shed were seen the remains of hundreds and possibly thousands of wings which were placed there but never cured for shipping, as the marauders were interrupted in their work.

SHED FILLED WITH WINGS OF SLAUGHTERED BIRDS ON LAYSAN ISLAND

"An old cistern back of one of the buildings tells a story of cruelty that surpasses anything else done by these heartless, sanguinary pirates, not excepting the practice of cutting wings from living birds and leaving them to die of hemorrhage. In this dry cistern the living birds were kept by hundreds to slowly starve to death. In this way the fatty tissue lying next to the skin was used up, and the skin was left quite free from grease, so that it required little or no cleaning during preparation.

"Many other revolting sights, such as the remains of young birds that had been left to starve, and birds with broken legs and deformed beaks were to be seen. Killing clubs, nets and other implements used by these marauders were lying all about. Hundreds of boxes to be used in shipping the bird skins were packed in an old building. It was very evident they intended to carry on their slaughter as long as the birds lasted.

"Not only did they kill and skin the larger species but they caught and caged the finch, honey eater, and miller bird. Cages and material for making them were found."—(Report of an Expedition to Laysan Island in 1911. By Homer R. Dill, page 12.)

The report of Professor Bryan contains the following pertinent paragraphs:

"This wholesale killing has had an appalling effect on the colony.... It is conservative to say that fully one-half the number of birds of both [Page 142] species of albatross that were so abundant everywhere in 1903 have been killed. The colonies that remain are in a sadly decimated condition. … Over a large part of the island, in some sections a hundred acres in a place, that ten years ago were thickly inhabited by albatrosses not a single bird remains, while heaps of the slain lie as mute testimony of the awful slaughter of these beautiful, harmless, and without doubt beneficial inhabitants of the high seas.

"While the main activity of the plume-hunters was directed against the albatrosses, they were by no means averse to killing anything in the bird line that came in their way. … Fortunately, serious as were the depredations of the poachers, their operations were interrupted before any of the species had been completely exterminated."

But the work of the Evil Genius of Laysan did not stop with the slaughter of three hundred thousand birds. Mr. Schlemmer introduced rabbits and guinea-pigs; and these rapidly multiplying rodents now are threatening to consume every plant on the island. If the plants disappear, many of the insects will go with them; and this will mean the disappearance of the small insectivorous birds.

In February, 1909, President Roosevelt issued an executive order creating the Hawaiian Islands Reservation for Birds. In this are included Laysan and twelve other islands and reefs, some of which are inhabited by birds that are well worth preserving. By this act, we may feel that for the future the birds of Laysan and neighboring islets are secure from further attacks by the bloody-handed agents of the vain women who still insist upon wearing the wings and feathers of wild birds.

For considerably more than a century, the States of the American Union have enacted game-protective laws based on the principle that the wild game belongs to the People, and the people's senators, representatives and legislators generally may therefore enact laws for its protection, prescribing the manner in which it may and may not be taken and possessed. The soundness of this principle has been fully confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Geer vs. Connecticut, on March 2, 1896.

The tendency of predatory man to kill and capture wild game of all kinds by wholesale methods is as old as the human race. The days of the club, the stone axe, the bow and arrow and the flint-lock gun were contemporaneous with the days of great abundance of game. Now that the advent of breech-loaders, repeaters, automatics and fixed ammunition has rendered game scarce in all localities save a very few, the thoughtful man is driven to consider measures for the checking of destruction and the suppression of wholesale slaughter.

First of all, the deadly floating batteries and sail-boats were prohibited. To-day a punt gun is justly regarded as a relic of barbarism, and any man who uses one places himself beyond the pale of decent sportsmanship, or even of modern pot-hunting. Strange to say, although the unwritten code of ethics of English sportsmen is very strict, the English to this day permit wild-fowl hunting with guns of huge calibre, some of which are more like shot-cannons than shot-guns. And they say, "Well, there are still wild duck on our coast!"

Beyond question, it is now high time for the English people to take up the shot-gun question, and consider what to-day is fair and unfair in the killing of waterfowl. The supply of British ducks and geese can not forever withstand the market gunners and their shot-cannons. Has not the British wild-fowl supply greatly decreased during the past fifteen years? I strongly suspect that a careful investigation would reveal the fact that it has diminished. The Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire should look into the matter, and obtain a series of reports on the condition of the waterfowl to-day as compared with what it was twenty years ago.

In the United States we have eliminated the swivel guns, the punt guns and the very-big-bore guns. Among the real sportsmen the tendency is steadily toward shot-guns of small calibre, especially under 12-gauge. But, outside the ranks of sportsmen, we are now face to face with two [Page 144] automatic and five "pump" shotguns of deadly efficiency. Of these, more than one hundred thousand are being made and sold annually by the five companies that produce them. Recently the annual output has been carefully estimated from known facts to be about as follows:

FOUR OF THE SEVEN MACHINE GUNS

The Ethics Of Shooting And Shot-Guns. —Are the American people willing that their wild birds shall be shot by machinery?

In the ethics of sportsmanship, the anglers of America are miles ahead of the men who handle the rifle and shot-gun in the hunting field. Will the hunters ever catch up?

The anglers have steadily diminished the weight of the rod and the size of the line; and they have prohibited the use of gang hooks and nets. In this respect the initiative of the Tuna Club of Santa Catalina is worthy of the highest admiration. Even though the leaping tuna, the jewfish and the sword-fish are big and powerful, the club has elected to raise the standard of sportsmanship by making captures more difficult than ever before. A higher degree of skill, and nerve and judgment, is required in the angler who would make good on a big fish; and, incidentally, the fish has about double "the show" that it had fifteen years ago.

That is Sportsmanship!

But how is it with the men who handle the shot-gun?

By them, the Tuna Club's high-class principle has been exactly reversed! In the making of fishing-rods, commercialism plays small part; but in about forty cases out of every fifty the making of guns is solely a matter of dollars and profits.

Excepting the condemnation of automatic and pump guns, I think that few clubs of sportsmen have laid down laws designed to make shooting more difficult, and to give the game more of a show to escape. Thousands of gentlemen sportsmen have their own separate unwritten codes of honor, but so far as I know, few of them have been written out and adopted as binding rules of action. I know that among expert wing shots it is an unwritten law that quail and grouse must not be shot on the ground, nor ducks on the water. But, among the three million gunners who annually shoot in the United States how many, think you, are there who in actual practice observe any sentimental principles when in the presence of killable game? I should say about one man and boy out of every five hundred.

Up to this time, the great mass of men who handle guns have left it to the gunmakers to make their codes of ethics, and hand them out with the loaded cartridges, all ready for use.

For fifty years the makers of shot-guns and rifles have taxed their ingenuity and resources to make killing easier, especially for "amateur" sportsmen,—and take still greater advantages of the game! Look at this scale of progression:

The Output of 1911. —At a recent hearing before a committee of the House of Representatives at Washington, a representative of the gun-making industry reported that in the year 1911 ten American manufacturing concerns turned out the following:

There are 66 factories producing firearms and ammunition, employing $39,377,000 of invested capital and 15,000 employees.

The sole and dominant thought of many gunmakers is to make the very deadliest guns that human skill can invent, sell them as fast as [Page 146] possible, and declare dividends on their stock. The Remington, Winchester, Marlin, Stevens and Union Companies are engaged in a mad race to see who can turn out the deadliest guns, and the most of them. On the market to-day there are five pump-guns, that fire six shots each, in about six seconds, without removal from the shoulder, by the quick sliding of a sleeve under the barrel, that ejects the empty shell and inserts a loaded one. There are two automatics that fire five shots each in five seconds or less, by five pulls on the trigger! The autoloading gun is reloaded and cocked again wholly by its own recoil. Now, if these are not machine guns, what are they?

In view of the great scarcity of feathered game, and the number of deadly machine guns already on the market, the production of the last and deadliest automatic gun (by the Winchester Arms Company), already in great demand, is a crime against wild life, no less.

Every human action is a matter of taste and individual honor.

It is natural for the duck-butchers of Currituck to love the automatic shot-guns as they do, because they kill the most ducks per flock. With two of them in his boat, holding ten shots, one expert duck-killer can,—and sometimes actually does, so it is said,—get every duck out of a flock, up to seven or eight.

It is natural for an awkward and blundering wing-shot to love the deadliest gun, in order that he may make as good a bag as an expert shot can make with a double-barreled gun. It is natural for the hunter who does not care a rap about the extermination of species to love the gun that will enable him to kill up to the bag limit, every time he takes the field. It is natural for men who don't think, or who think in circles, to say "so long as I observe the lawful bag limit, what difference does it make what kind of a gun I use?"

It is natural for the Remington, and Winchester, and Marlin gun-makers to say, as they do, "Enforce the laws! Shorten the open seasons! Reduce the bag limit, and then it won't matter what guns are used! But,—DON'T touch autoloading guns! Don't hamper Inventive Genius!"

Is it not high time for American sportsmen to cease taking their moral principles and their codes of ethics from the gun-makers?

Here is a question that I would like to put before every hunter of game in America:

In view of the alarming scarcity of game, in view of the impending extermination of species by legal hunting, can any high-minded sportsman, can any good citizen either sell a machine shot-gun or use one in hunting?

A gentleman is incapable of taking an unfair advantage of any wild creature; therefore a gentleman cannot use punt guns for ducks, dynamite for game fish, or automatic or pump guns in bird-shooting. The machine guns and "silencers" are grossly unfair, and like gang-hooks, nets and [Page 147] dynamite for trout and bass, their use in hunting must everywhere be prohibited by law. Times have changed, and the lines for protection must be more tightly drawn.

THE CHAMPION GAME SLAUGHTER CASE

One Hour's Slaughter (218 Geese) With Two Automatic Shot-Guns

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (Judge Orlady) has decided that the Pennsylvania law against the use of automatic guns in hunting is entirely constitutional, because every state has a right to say how its game may and may not be killed.

It is up to the American People to say now whether their wild life shall be slaughtered by machinery, or not.

If they are willing that it should be, then let us be consistent and say—away with all "conservation!" The game conservators can endure a gameless and birdless continent quite as well as the average citizen can.

How They Work. —There are a few apologists for the automatic and pump guns who cheerfully say, "So long as the bag limit is observed what difference does it make how the birds are killed?"

It is strange that a conscientious man should ask such a question, when the answer is apparent.

We reply, "The difference is that an automatic or pump gun will kill fully twice as many waterfowl as a double-barrel, if not more; and it is highly undesirable that every gunner should get the bag limit of [Page 148] birds, or any number near it! The birds can not stand it. Moreover, the best states for ducks and geese have no bag limits on those birds! To-day, on Currituck Sound, for example, the market hunters are killing all the waterfowl they can sell. On Marsh Island, Louisiana, one man has killed 369 ducks in one day, and another market gunner killed 430 in one day.

The automatic and the "pump" shot-guns are the favorite weapons of the game-hog who makes a specialty of geese and ducks. It is no uncommon thing for a gunner who shoots a machine gun to get, with one gun, as high as eight birds out of one flock. A man who has himself done this has told me so.

The Champion Game-Slaughter Case. —Here is a story from California that is no fairy tale. It was published, most innocently, in a western magazine, with the illustration that appears herewith, and in which please notice the automatic shot-gun:

"February 5th, I and a friend were at one of the Glenn County Club's camps. … Neither of us having ever had the pleasure of shooting over live decoys, we were anxious, and could hardly wait for the sport to commence. On arriving at the scene we noticed holes which had been dug in the ground, just large enough for a man to crawl into. These holes were used for hiding places, and were deep enough so the sportsmen would be entirely out of sight of the game. The birds are so wild that to move a finger will frighten them. …

"The decoys are wild geese which had been crippled and tamed for this purpose. They are placed inside of silk net fences which are located on each side of the holes dug for hiding places. These nets are the color of the ground and it is impossible for the wild geese flying overhead to detect the difference.

"After we had investigated everything the expert caller and owner of the outfit exclaimed: 'Into your holes!'

"We noticed in the distance a flock of geese coming. Our caller in a few seconds had their attention, and they headed towards our decoys. Soon they were directly over us, but out of easy range of our guns. We were anxious to shoot, but in obedience to our boss had to keep still, and soon noticed that the birds were soaring around and in a short time were within fifteen or twenty feet of us. At that moment we heard the command, 'Punch 'em!' and the bombardment that followed was beyond imagining. We had fired five shots apiece and found we had bagged ten geese from this one flock.

"At the end of one hour's shooting we had 218 birds to our credit and were out of ammunition.

"On finding that no more shells were in our pits we took our dead geese to the camp and returned with a new supply of ammunition. We remained in the pits during the entire day. When the sun had gone behind the mountains we summed up our kill and it amounted to 450 geese!

"The picture shown with this article gives a view of the first hour's shoot. A photograph would have been taken of the remainder of the shoot, but it being warm weather the birds had to be shipped at once in order to keep them from spoiling.

SLAUGHTERED ACCORDING TO LAW

A Result of a Faulty System. Such Pictures as this are Very Common in Sportsmen's Magazines. Note the Automatic Gun

"Supper was then eaten, after which we were driven back to Willows; both agreeing that it was one of the greatest days of sport we ever had, and wishing that we might, through the courtesy of the Glenn County Goose Club, have another such day. C.H.B."

Another picture was published in a Canadian magazine, illustrating a story from which I quote:

"I fixed the decoys, hid my boat and took my position in the blind. My man started his work with a will and hustled the ducks out of every cove, inlet or piece of marsh for two miles around. I had barely time to slip the cartridges into my guns—one a double and the other a five shot automatic—when I saw a brace of birds coming toward me. They sailed in over my decoys. I rose to the occasion, and the leader up-ended and tumbled in among the decoys. The other bird, unable to stop quick enough, came directly over me. He closed his wings and struck the ground in the rear of the blind.

"More and more followed. Sometimes they came singly, and then in twos [Page 150] and threes. I kept busy and attended to each bird as quickly as possible. Whenever there was a lull in the flight I went out in the boat and picked up the dead, leaving the wounded to take chances with any gunner lucky enough to catch them in open and smooth water. A bird handy in the air is worth two wounded ones in the water. Twice I took six dead birds out of the water for seven shots, and both guns empty.

"The ball thus opened, the birds commenced to move in all directions. Until the morning's flight was over I was kept busy pumping lead, first with the 10, then with the automatic, reloading, picking up the dead, etc."

And the reader will observe that the harmless, innocent, inoffensive automatic shot gun, that "don't matter if you enforce the bag limit," figures prominently in both stories and both photographs.

A Story of Two Pump Guns and Geese: —It comes from Aberdeen, S.D. (Sand Lake), in the spring of 1911. Mr. J.J. Humphrey tells it, in Outdoor Life magazine for July, 1911.

"Smith and I were about a hundred yards from them [the flock of Canada geese], when Murphy scared them. They rose in a dense mass and came directly between Smith and me. We were about gunshot distance apart, and they were not over thirty feet in the air when we opened up on them with our pump guns and No. 5 shot. When the smoke cleared away and we had rounded up the cripples we found we had twenty-one geese. I have heard of bigger killings out in this country, but never positively knew of them."

So then: those two gunners averaged 10-1/2 wild geese per pump gun out of one flock! And yet there are wise and reflective sportsmen who say, "What difference does the kind of gun make so long as you live up to the law?"

I think that the pump and automatic guns make about 75 per-cent of difference, against the game; that is all!

The number of shot-guns now in use in the United States is almost beyond belief. About six years ago a gentleman interested in the manufacture of such weapons informed me, and his statement has never been disputed, that every year about 500,000 new shot-guns were sold in the United States. The number of shot cartridges annually produced by our four great cartridge companies has been reliably estimated as follows:

We must stop all the holes in the barrel, or eventually lose all the water. No group of bird-slaughterers is entitled to immunity. We will not "limit the bag, and enforce the laws," while we permit the makers and users of autoloading and pump guns to kill at will, as they demand.

A Letter That Tells Its Own Story

Yes; we will "limit the bag" and "enforce the laws;" but the machine guns and the alien shooters shall be eliminated at the same time! Each state has the power to regulate, absolutely, down to the smallest detail, the manner in which the game of The People shall be taken or not taken; and such laws are absolutely constitutional. If we can legislate punt guns and dynamite out of use, the machine guns and silencers can be treated similarly.

No immunity for wild-life exterminators.

The following unprejudiced testimony from a New York business man who is a sportsman, with a fine game preserve of his own, should be of general interest. It was written to G.O. Shields, March 21, 1906.

Dear Sir:

Regarding the use of the automatic shot-gun, would say that I am a member of two southern ducking clubs where these guns are used very extensively. I have seen a flock of ducks come into a blind where one, two, or even three of these guns were in use, and have seen as many as eleven shots poured into a single flock.

We have considerable poaching on one of these clubs, the territory being so extensive that it is impossible to prevent it. We own 60,000 acres, and these poachers, I am told, nearly all use the automatic guns. They frequently kill six or eight ducks out of one flock—first taking a raking shot on the water, and then getting in the balance of the magazine before the flock is out of range. In fact, some of them carry two guns, and are able to discharge a part of the second magazine into the same flock.

As I told you the other evening, I am not so much against the gun when in the hands of gentlemen and real sportsmen, but, on account of its terrible possibilities for market hunters, I believe that the only safe way is to abolish it entirely, and that the better class should be willing to give up this weapon as being the only means of putting a stop to this willful game slaughter.

Very truly yours,

Arthur Robinson.

HOW GENTLEMEN SPORTSMEN REGARD AUTOMATIC AND PUMP GUNS

Each one of the following organizations, chiefly clubs of gentlemen sportsmen, have adopted strong resolutions condemning the use of automatic guns in hunting, and either requesting or recommending the enactment of laws against their use:

A MODEL BILL TO PROHIBIT THE USE OF AUTOMATIC AND REPEATING SHOT GUNS IN HUNTING

Section 1. It shall be unlawful to use in hunting or shooting birds or animals of any kind, any automatic or repeating shot gun or pump gun, or any shot-gun holding more than two cartridges at one time, or that may be fired more than twice without removal from the shoulder for reloading.

Section 2. Violation of any provision of this act shall be punished by a fine of not less than twenty-five nor more than one hundred dollars for each offence; and the carrying, or possession in the woods, or in any field, or upon any water of any gun or other weapon the use of which is prohibited, as aforesaid, shall be prima facie evidence of the violation of this act.

The English 3-barrel "Scatter Rifle," for Ducks. —All gunners who find machine guns good enough for them will be delighted by the news that an Englishman whose identity is concealed under the initials "F.M.M." has invented and manufactured a 3-barreled rifle specially intended to kill ducks that are beyond the reach of a choke-bore shotgun. The weapon discharges all three barrels simultaneously. In the London Field, of Dec. 9, 1911, it is described by a writer who also thoughtfully conceals his identity under a nom-de-plume. After a trial of 48 shots, the writer declares that "the 3-barreled is a really practicable weapon," and that with it one could bag wild-fowl that were quite out of reach of any shot-gun. Just why a Gatling gun or a Maxim should not be employed for the same purpose, the writer fails to state. The use of either would be quite as sportsmanlike, and as fair to the game. There are great possibilities in ducking mortars, also.

The "Sunday Gun." —A new weapon of peculiar form and great deadliness to song birds, has recently come into use. Because of the manner of its use, it is known as the "Sunday gun." It is specially adapted to concealment on the person. A man could go through a reception with one of these deadly weapons absolutely concealed under his dress coat! It is a weapon with two barrels, rifle and shot; and it enables the user to kill anything from a humming-bird up to a deer. What the shot-barrel can not kill, the rifle will. It is not a gun that any sportsman would own, save as a curiosity, or for target use.

The State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, Mr. E.H. Forbush, informs me that already the "Sunday gun" has become a scourge to the bird life of that state. Thousands of them are used by men and boys who live in [Page 154] cities and towns, and are able to get into the country only on Sundays. They conceal them under their coats, on Sunday mornings, go out into the country, and spend the day in shooting small birds and mammals. The dead birds are concealed in various pockets, the Sunday gun goes under the coat, and at nightfall the guerrilla rides back to the city with an innocent smile on his face, as if he had spent a day in harmless enjoyment of the beauties of nature.

The "Sunday gun" is on sale everywhere, and it is said to be in use both by American and Italian killers of song-birds. It weighs only two pounds, eight ounces, and its cost is so trifling that any guerrilla who wishes one can easily find the money for its purchase. There are in the United States at least a million men and boys quite mean enough to use this weapon on song-birds, swallows, woodpeckers, nuthatches, rabbits and squirrels, and like other criminals, hide both weapon and loot in their clothing. So long as this gun is in circulation, no small bird is safe, at any season, near any city or town.

Now, what are the People going to do about it?

My recommendation is that each state enact a law in the following terms:

Be it enacted, etc.—That from and after the passage of this act it shall be unlawful for any person to use in hunting, or to carry concealed on the person, any shotgun, or rifle, or combination of shotgun and rifle, with a barrel or barrels less than twenty-eight inches in length, or with a skeleton stock fixed on a hinge.

The carrying of any rifle or shotgun concealed on the person shall constitute a felony.

The penalties for hunting with any gun specially adapted to concealment should be not less than $50 fine or two months imprisonment at hard labor, and the carrying of such weapons concealed should be $100 or four months at hard labor.

Incidentally, we wonder what will be the next devilish device for the destruction of wild life that American inventive genius will produce.

THE "SUNDAY GUN!"

A Deadly Combination of Concealable Rifle-and-Shot-Gun.

THE WILDERNESS OF NORTH AMERICA (SHADED) AND THE ARCTIC PRAIRIES, WELL STOCKED WITH BIG GAME

The subject of this chapter opens up a vast field of facts and conclusions, quite broad enough to fill a whole volume. In the space at our disposal here it is possible to offer only a summary of the subject, without attempting to prove our statements by the production of detailed evidence.

To say that all over the world, the large land mammals are being destroyed more rapidly than they are breeding, would not be literally true, for the reason that there are yet many areas that are almost untouched by the destroying hand of civilized man. It is true, however, that all the unspoiled areas rapidly are growing fewer and smaller. It is also true that in all the regions of the earth that are easily penetrable by civilized man, the wild life is being killed faster than it breeds, and of necessity it is disappearing. This is why the British are now so urgently bestirring themselves to create game preserves in all the countries that they own.

It is one of the inexorable laws of Nature, to which I know of not one exception, that large hoofed animals which live on open plains, on open mountains, or in regions that are thinly forested, always are easily found and easily exterminated. All such animals have a weak hold on life. This is because it is so difficult for them to hide, and so very easy for man to creep up within the killing range of modern, high-power, long-range rifles. Is it not pitiful to think of animals like the caribou, moose, white sheep and bear trying to survive on the naked ridges and bald mountains of Yukon Territory and Alaska! With a modern rifle, the greatest duffer on earth can creep up within killing distance of any of the big game of the North.

The gray wolf is practically the only large animal that is able to hide successfully and survive in the treeless regions of the North; but his room is always preferable to his company, because he, too, is a destroyer of big game.

I am tempted to try to map out roughly what are to-day the unopened and undestroyed wild haunts of big game in North America. In doing this, however, I warn the reader not to be deceived into thinking that because game still exists in those regions, those areas therefore constitute a permanent preserve and safe breeding-ground for large mammals. That is very, very far from being the case. The further "opening up " of the [Page 157] wilderness areas, as I shall call them for convenience, can and surely will quickly wipe out their big game; for throughout nine-tenths of those areas it holds to life by very slender threads.

To-day the unopened and undestroyed wilderness areas of North America, wherein large mammals still live in a normal wild state, are in general as follows:

The Arctic Barren Grounds , or Arctic Prairies, north of the limit of trees, embracing the Barren Grounds of northern Canada, the great arctic archipelago, Ellesmere, Melville and Grant Lands and Greenland. This region is the home of the musk-ox and three species of arctic caribou.

The Alaska-Yukon Region , inhabited by the moose, white mountain sheep, mountain goat, four species of caribou, and half a dozen species of Alaska brown, grizzly and black bears.

Northern Ontario, Quebec, Labrador And Newfoundland , inhabited by moose, woodland caribou, white-tailed deer and black bear.

British Columbia , inhabited by a magnificent big-game fauna embracing the moose, elk, caribou of two species, white sheep, black sheep, big-horn sheep, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, grizzly, black and inland white bears.

The Sierra Madre Of Mexico , containing jaguar, puma, grizzly and black bears, mule deer, white-tailed deer, antelope, mountain sheep and peccaries.

I have necessarily omitted all those regions of the United States and Canada that still contain a remnant of big game, but have been literally "shot to pieces" by gunners.

In the United States and southern Canada there are about fifteen localities which contain a supply of big game sufficient that a conscientious sportsman might therein hunt and kill one head per year with a clear conscience. All others should be closed for five years! Here is the list of availables; and regarding it there will be about as many opinions as there are big-game sportsmen:

HUNTING GROUNDS IN AND NEAR THE UNITED STATES AND SOUTHERN CANADA WHEREIN IT IS RIGHT TO HUNT BIG GAME

The Maine Woods : Well stocked with white-tailed deer.

New Brunswick : Well stocked with moose; a few caribou, deer and black bear.

White Mountains Of New Hampshire And Vermont : For deer.

The Adirondacks, New York : Well stocked with white-tailed deer, only.

Pennsylvania Mountains : Contain many deer and black bears, and soon will contain more.

Northern Minnesota : Deer and moose.

Northern Michigan And Wisconsin : White-tailed deer.

Northwestern Wyoming : Thousands of elk in fall and winter; a few deer, grizzly and black bears, but no sheep that it would be right to kill.

Western And Southwestern Montana : Elk in season, mule and white-tail deer; no sheep that it would be right to kill.

Northwestern Montana : Mule and white-tailed deer, only. No sheep, bear, moose, elk or antelope to kill!

Wyoming, East Of Yellowstone Park : A few elk, by migration from the Park; a few deer, and bear of two species.

Northern Woods Of Ontario And Quebec : Moose; deer.

Southern British Columbia : Goat, a few sheep and deer; grizzly bear. Moose, caribou and elk should not be killed.

Northern British Columbia : Six fine species of big game.

Northwestern Alberta : Grizzly bear, big-horn and mountain goat.

Under existing conditions I regard the above-named hunting grounds as nearly all in which it is right or fair for big-game hunting now to be permitted, even on a strict basis. Nearly all others should immediately be closed, for large game, for ten years.

Of course such a proceeding, if carried into effect, would provoke loud protests from sportsmen, gunners, game-hogs, pot-hunters and others; but I only wish to high heaven that we had the power to carry such a program as that into effect! Then we would see some game in ten years; and our grand-children would thank us for some real big-game protection at a critical period.

Except in the few localities above-mentioned, I regard the big-game situation in the United States and southern Canada as particularly desperate. Unless there is an immediate and complete revolution in this country from an era of slaughter to an era of preservation, as sure as the sun rises on the morrow, outside of the hard and fast game preserves, and places like Maine and the Adirondacks, this generation of Americans and near-Americans will live to see our country swept clean of big game!

Two years ago, I did not believe this; but I do now. It is impossible to exaggerate the wide extent or the seriousness of this situation. In a country where any and every individual can rise and bluster, "I'm-just-as-good-as-you-are," and bellow for his "rights" as a "tax-payer," there is no stopping the millions who kill whenever there is an open season. And to many Americans, no right is dearer than the right to kill the game which by even the commonest law of equity belongs, not to the shooter exclusively, but partly to two thousand other persons who don't shoot at all!

Unless we come to an "About, face!" in quick time, all our big game outside the preserves is doomed to sure and quick extermination. This is not an individual opinion, merely: it is a fact; and a hundred thousand men know it to be such.

Last winter (1911-12), because the deer of Montana were driven by cold and hunger out of the mountains and far down into the ranchmen's [Page 159] valleys, eleven thousand of them were ruthlessly slaughtered. State Game Warden Avare says that often heads of families took out as many licenses as there were persons in the family, and the whole quota was killed. Such people deserve to go deerless into the future; but we can not allow them to rob innocent people.

OUR SPECIES OF BIG GAME

The Prong-Horned Antelope , unique and wonderful, will be one of the first species of North American big game to become totally extinct. We may see this come to pass within twenty years. They can not be bred in protection, save in very large fenced ranges. They are delicate, capricious, and easily upset. They die literally "at the drop of a hat." They are quite subject to actinomycosis (lumpy-jaw), which in wild animals is incurable.

Already all the states that possess wild antelope, except Nevada, have passed laws giving that species long close seasons; which is highly creditable to the states that have done their duty. Nevada must get in line at the next session of her legislature!

In 1908, Dr. T.S. Palmer published in his annual report of "Progress in Game Protection" the following in regard to the prong-horned antelope:

"Antelope are still found in diminished numbers in fourteen western states. A considerable number were killed during the year in Montana, where the species seems to have suffered more than elsewhere since the season was opened in 1907.

"A striking illustration of the decrease of the antelope is afforded by Colorado. In 1898 the State Warden estimated that there were 25,000 in the state, whereas in 1908 the Game Commissioner places the number at only 2,000. The total number of antelope now in the United States probably does not exceed 17,000, distributed approximately as follows:

To-day (1912), Dr. Palmer says the total number of antelope is less than it was in 1908, and in spite of protection the number is steadily diminishing. This is indeed serious news. The existing bands, already small, are steadily growing smaller. The antelope are killed lawlessly, and the crimes of such slaughter are, in nearly every instance, successfully concealed.

Previously, we have based strong hopes for the preservation of the antelope species on the herd in the Yellowstone Park, but those animals are vanishing fearfully fast. In 1906, Dr. Palmer reported that "About fifteen hundred antelope came down to the feeding grounds near the haystacks in the vicinity of Gardiner." In 1908 the Yellowstone Park [Page 160] was credited with two thousand head. To-day, the number alive, by actual count, is only five hundred head; and this after twenty-five years of protection! Where have the others gone? This shows, alas! that perpetual close seasons can not always bring back the vanished thousands of game!

PRONG-HORNED ANTELOPE

Here is a reliable report (June 29, 1912) regarding the prong-horned antelope in Lower California, from E.W. Nelson: "Antelope formerly ranged over nearly the entire length of Lower California, but are now gone from a large part of their ancient range, and their steadily decreasing numbers indicate their early extinction throughout the peninsula."

In captivity the antelope is exasperatingly delicate and short-lived. It has about as much stamina as a pet monkey. As an exhibition animal in zoological gardens and parks it is a failure; for it always looks faded, spiritless and dead, like a stuffed animal ready to be thrown into the discard. Zoologists can not save the prong-horn species save at long range, in preserves so huge that the sensitive little beast will not even suspect that it is confined.

Two serious attempts have been made to transplant and acclimatize the [Page 161] antelope—in the Wichita National Bison Range, in Oklahoma, and in the Montana Bison Range, at Ravalli. In 1911 the Boone and Crockett Club provided a fund which defrayed the expenses of shipping from the Yellowstone Park a small nucleus herd to each of those ranges. Eight were sent to the Wichita Range, of which five arrived alive. Of the seven sent to the Montana Range, four arrived alive and were duly set free. While it seems a pity to take specimens from the Yellowstone Park herd, the disagreeable fact is that there is no other source on which to draw for breeding stock.

The Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, in Canada, still permit the hunting and killing of antelope; which is wholly and entirely wrong.

The Big-Horn Sheep. —Of North American big game, the big-horn of the Rockies will be, after the antelope, the next species to become extinct outside of protected areas. In the United States that event is fast approaching. It is far nearer than even the big-game sportsmen realize. There are to-day only two localities in the four states that still think they have killable sheep, in which it is worth while to go sheep-hunting. One is in Montana, and the other is in Wyoming. In the United States a really big, creditable ram may now be regarded as an impossibility. There are now perhaps half a dozen guides who can find killable sheep in our country, but the game is nearly always young rams, under five years of age.

That Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington still continue to permit sheep slaughter is outrageous. Their answer is that "The sportsmen won't stand for stopping it altogether." I will add:—and the great mass of people are too criminally indifferent to take a hand in the matter, and do their duty regardless of the men of blood.

The seed stock of big-horn sheep now alive in the United States aggregates a pitifully small number. After twenty-five years of unbroken protection in Colorado, Dillon Wallace estimates, after an investigation on the ground, that the state possesses perhaps thirty-five hundred head. He credits Montana and Wyoming with five hundred each—which I think is far too liberal a number. I do not believe that either of those states contains more than one hundred unprotected sheep, at the very utmost limit. If there are more, where are they?

In the Yellowstone Park there are 210 head, safe and sound, and slowly increasing. I can not understand why they have not increased more rapidly than they have. In Glacier Park, now under permanent protection, three guides on Lake McDonald, in 1910, estimated the number of sheep at seven hundred. Idaho has in her rugged Bitter Root and Clearwater Mountains and elsewhere, a remnant of possibly two hundred sheep, and Washington has only what chemists call "a trace." It has recently been discovered that California still contains a few sheep, and in southwestern Nevada there are a few more.

In Utah, the big-horn species is probably quite extinct. In Arizona, there are a few very small bands, very widely scattered. They are in the Santa Catalina Mountains, the Grand Canyon country, the Gila Range, and [Page 162] the Quitovaquita Mountains, near Sonoyta. But who can protect from slaughter those Arizona sheep? Absolutely no one! They are too few and too widely scattered for the game wardens to keep in touch with them. The "prospectors" have them entirely at their mercy, and the world well knows what prospectors' "mercy" to edible big game looks like on the ground. It leads straight to the frying-pan, the coyotes and the vultures.

The Lower California peninsula contains about five hundred mountain sheep, without the slightest protection save low, desert mountains, heat and thirst. But that is no real protection whatever. Those sheep are too fine to be butchered the way they have been, and now are being butchered. In 1908 I strongly called the attention of the Mexican Government to the situation; and the Departmento de Fomento secured the issue of an executive order forbidding the hunting of any big game in Lower California without the written authority of the government. I am sure, however, that owing to the political and military upheaval it never stopped the slaughter of sheep. In such easy mountains as those of Lower California, it is a simple matter to exterminate quickly all the mountain sheep that they possess. The time for President Madero and his cabinet to inaugurate serious protective measures has fully arrived.

Both British Columbia and Alberta have even yet fine herds of big-horn, and we can count three large game preserves in which they are protected. They are Goat Mountain Park (East Kootenay district, between the Elk and Bull Rivers); the Rocky Mountains Park, near Banff, and Waterton Lakes Park, in the southwestern corner of Alberta.

In view of the number of men who desire to hunt them, the bag limit on big-horn rams in British Columbia and Alberta still is too liberal, by half. One ram per year for one man is quite enough; quite as much so as one moose is the limit everywhere. To-day "a big, old ram" is regarded by sportsmen as a much more desirable and creditable trophy than a moose; because moose-killing is easy, and the bagging of an old mountain ram in real mountains requires five times as much effort and skill.

The splendid high and rugged mountains of British Columbia and Alberta form an ideal home for the big-horn (and mountain goat), and it would be an international calamity for that region to be denuded of its splendid big game. With resolute intent and judicial treatment that region can remain a rich and valuable hunting ground for five hundred years to come. Under falsely "liberal" laws, it can be shot into a state of complete desolation within ten years, or even less.

Other Mountain Sheep. —In northern British Columbia, north of Iskoot Lake, there lies a tremendous region, extending to the Arctic Ocean, and comprehending the whole area between the Rocky Mountain continental divide and the waters of the Pacific. Over the southern end of this great wilderness ranges the black mountain sheep, and throughout the remainder, with many sheepless intervals, is scattered the white mountain sheep.

Owing to the immensity of this wilderness, the well-nigh total lack of railroads and also of navigable waters, excepting the Yukon, it will not be thoroughly "opened up" for a quarter of a century. The few resolute and pneumonia-proof sportsmen who can wade into the country, pulling boats through icy-cold mountain streams, are not going to devastate those millions of mountains of their big game. The few head of game which sportsmen can and will take out of the great northwestern wilderness during the next twenty-five years will hardly be missed from the grand total, even though a few easily-accessible localities are shot out. It is the deadly resident trappers, hunters and prospectors who must be feared! And again,—who can control them? Can any wilderness government on earth make it possible? Therefore, in time, even the great wilderness will be denuded of big game. This is absolutely fixed and certain; for within much less than another century, every square rod of it will have been gone over by prospectors, lumbermen, trappers and skin-hunters, and raked again and again with fine-toothed combs. A railway line to Dawson, the Copper River and Cook Inlet is to-day merely the next thing to expect, after Canada's present railway program has been wrought out.

Yes, indeed! In time the wilderness will be opened up, and the big game will all be shot out, save from the protected areas.

The Mountain Goat. —Even yet, this species is not wholly extinct in the United States. It survives in Glacier Park, Montana, and the number estimated in that region by three guide friends is too astoundingly large to mention.

This animal is much more easily killed than the big-horn. Its white coat renders it fatally conspicuous at long range during the best hunting season; it is almost devoid of fear, and it takes altogether too many chances on man. Thanks to the rage for sheep horns, the average sportsman's view-point regarding wild life ranks a goat head about six contours below "old ram" heads, in desirability. Furthermore, most guides regard the flesh of the goat as almost unfit for use as food, and far inferior to that of the big-horn. These reasons, taken together, render the goats much less persecuted by the sportsmen, ranchmen and prospectors who enter the home of the two species. It was because of this indifference toward goats that in 1905 Mr. John M. Phillips and his party saw 243 goats in thirty days in Goat Mountain Park, and only fourteen sheep.

Unless the preferences of western sportsmen and gunners change very considerably, the coast mountains of the great northwestern wilderness will remain stocked with wild mountain goats until long after the last big-horn has been shot to death. Fortunately, the skin of the mountain goat has no commercial value. I think it was in 1887 that I purchased, in Denver, 150 nicely tanned skins of our wild white goat at fifty cents each! They were wanted for the first exhibit ever made to illustrate the extermination of American large mammals, and they were shown at the Louisville Exposition. It must have cost the price of those skins to tan them; and I was pleased to know that some one lost money on the venture.

MAP OF THE FORMER AND EXISTING RANGES OF THE AMERICAN ELK

From "Life History of Northern Animals," Copyright 1909 by E.T. Seton

At present the mountain goat extends from north-western Montana to the head of Cook Inlet, but it is not found in the interior or in the Yukon valley. Whenever man decides that the species has lived long enough, he can quickly and easily exterminate it. It is one of the most picturesque and interesting wild animals on this continent, and there is not the slightest excuse for shooting it, save as a specimen of natural history. Like the antelope, it is so unique as a natural curiosity that it deserves to be taken out of the ranks of animals that are regularly pursued as game.

The Elk. —The story of the progressive extermination of the American elk, or wapiti, covers practically the same territory as the tragedy of the American bison—one-third of the mainland of North America. The former range of the elk covered absolutely the garden ground of our continent, omitting the arid region. Its boundary extended from central Massachusetts to northern Georgia, southern Illinois, northern Texas and central New Mexico, central Arizona, the whole Rocky Mountain region up to the Peace River, and Manitoba. It skipped the arid country west of the Rockies, but it embraced practically the whole Pacific slope from central California to the north end of Vancouver Island. Mr. Seton [Page 165] roughly calculated the former range of canadensis at two and a half million square miles, and adds: "We are safe, therefore, in believing that in those days there may have been ten million head."

The range of the elk covered a magnificent domain. The map prepared by Mr. Ernest T. Seton, after twenty years of research, is the last word on the subject. It appears on page 43, Vol. I, of his great work, "Life Histories of Northern Animals," and I have the permission of author and publisher to reproduce it here, as an object lesson in wild-animal extermination. Mr. Seton recognizes (for convenience, only?) four forms of American elk, two of which, C. nannodes and occidentalis, still exist on the Pacific Coast. The fourth, Cervus merriami, was undoubtedly a valid species. It lived in Arizona and New Mexico, but became totally extinct near the beginning of the present century.

In 1909 Mr. Seton published in the work referred to above a remarkably close estimate of the number of elk then alive in North America. Recently, a rough count—the first ever made—of the elk in and around the Yellowstone Park, revealed the real number of that largest contingent. By taking those results, and Mr. Seton's figures for elk outside the United States, we obtain the following very close approximation of the wild elk alive in North America in 1912:

In 1905, a herd of twenty of the so-called dwarf elk of the San Joaquin Valley, California, were taken to the Sequoia National Park, and placed in a fenced range that had been established for it on the Kaweah River.

The extermination of the wapiti began with the settlement of the American colonies. Naturally, the largest animals were the ones most eagerly sought by the meat-hungry pioneers, and the elk and bison were the first game species to disappear. The colonists believed in the survival of the fittest, and we are glad that they did. The one thing that a hungry pioneer cannot withstand is—temptation—in a form that embraces five hundred pounds of succulent flesh. And let it not be supposed that in the eastern states there were only a few elk. The Pennsylvania salt licks were crowded with them, and the early writers describe them as existing in "immense bands" and "great numbers."

Of course it is impossible for wild animals of great size to exist in countries that are covered with farms, villages and people. Under such conditions the wild and the tame cannot harmonize. It is a fact, however, that elk could exist and thrive in every national forest and national park in our country, and also on uncountable hundreds of thousands of rough, wild, timbered hills and mountains such as exist in probably twenty-five different states. There is no reason, except man's short-sighted greed and foolishness, why there are not to-day one hundred thousand elk living in the Allegheny Mountains, furnishing each year fifty thousand three-year-old males as free food for the people.

The trouble is,—the greedy habitants could not be induced to kill only the three-year-old-males, in the fall, and let the cows, calves and breeding bulls alone! By sensible management the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevadas and the Coast Range would support enough wild elk to feed a million people. But we Americans seem utterly incapable of maintaining anywhere from decade to decade a large and really valuable supply of wild game. Outside the Yellowstone Park and northwestern Wyoming, the American elk exists only in small bands—mere remnants and samples of the millions we could and should have.

If they could be protected, and the surplus presently killed according to some rational, working system, then every national forest in the United States should be stocked with elk! In view of the awful cost of beef (to-day 10-1/2 cents per pound in Chicago on the hoof!), it is high time that we should consider the raising of game on the public domain on such lines that it would form a valuable food supply without diminishing the value of the forests.

Just now (1912) the American people are sorely puzzled by a remarkable elk problem that each winter is presented for solution in the Jackson Hole country, Wyoming. Driven southward by the deep snows of winter, the elk thousands that in summer graze and grow fat in the Yellowstone Park march down into Jackson Hole, to find in those valleys less snow and more food. Now, it happens that the best and most of the former winter grazing grounds of the elk are covered by fenced ranches! As a result, the elk that strive to winter there, about fifteen thousand head, are each winter threatened with starvation; and during three or four winters of recent date, an aggregate of several thousand calves, weak yearlings and weakened cows perished of hunger. The winters of 1908, 1909 and 1910 were progressively more and more severe; and 1911 saw about 2500 deaths, (S.N. Leek).

In 1909-10, the State of Wyoming spent $7,000 for hay, and fed it to the starving elk. In 1911, Wyoming spent $5,000 more, and appealed to Congress for help. Thanks to the efforts of Senator Lodge and others, Congress instantly responded with a splendid emergency appropriation of $20,000, partly for the purpose of feeding the elk, and also to meet the cost of transporting elsewhere as many of the elk as it might seem best to move. The starving of the elk ceased with 1911.

Outdoor Life magazine (Denver, Colo.) for August, 1912, contains an [Page 167] excellent article by Dr. W.B. Shore, entitled, "Trapping and Shipping Elk." I wish I could reprint it entire, for the solid information that it contains. It gives a clear and comprehensive account of last spring's operations by the Government and by the state of Montana in capturing and shipping elk from the Yellowstone Park herd, for the double purpose of diminishing the elk surplus in the Park and stocking vacant ranges elsewhere.

The operations were conducted on the same basis as the shipping of cattle—the corral, the chute, the open car, and the car-load in bulk. Dr. Shore states that the undertaking was really no more difficult than the shipping of range cattle; but the presence of a considerable proportion of young and tender calves, such as are never handled with beef cattle, led to 8.8 per cent of deaths in transit. The deaths and the percentage are nothing at which to be surprised, when it is remembered, that the animals had just come through a hard winter, and their natural vitality was at the lowest point of the year.

The following is a condensed summary of the results of the work:

In order to provide adequate winter grazing grounds for the Yellowstone-Wyoming elk, it seems imperative that the national government should expend between $30,000 and $40,000 in buying back from ranchmen certain areas in the Jackson valley, particularly a tract known as "the swamp," and others on the surrounding foothills where the herds annually go to graze in winter, A measure to render this possible was presented to Congress in the winter of 1912, and without opposition an appropriation of $45,000 was made.

The splendid photographs of the elk herds that recently have been made [Page 168] by S.N. Leek, of Jackson Hole, clearly reveal the fact that the herds now consist chiefly of cows, calves, yearlings and young bulls with small antlers. In one photograph showing about twenty-five hundred elk, there are not visible even half a dozen pairs of antlers that belong to adult bulls. There should be a hundred! This condition means that the best bulls, with the finest heads, are constantly being selected and killed by sportsmen and others who want their heads; and the young, immature bulls are left to do the breeding that alone will sustain the species.

HUNGRY ELK IN JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING

Part of a Herd of About 2,500 Head, being fed on hay, in the Winter of 1910-11

Note the Absence of Adult Bulls. Copyright, 1911, by S.N. Leek

It is a well-known principle in stock-breeding that sires should be fully adult, of maximum strength, and in the prime of life. No stockbreeder in his senses ever thinks of breeding from a youthful, immature sire. The result would be weak offspring not up to the standard.

This inexorable law of inheritance and transmission is just as much a law for the elk, moose and deer of North America as it is for domestic cattle and horses. If the present conditions in the Wyoming elk herds continue to prevail for several generations, as sure as time goes on we shall see a marked deterioration in the size and antlers of the elk.

If the foundation principles of stock-breeding are correct, then it is impossible to maintain any large-mammal species at its zenith of size, strength and virility by continuous breeding of the young and immature males. By some sportsmen it is believed that through long-continued killing of the finest and largest males, the red deer of Europe have been growing smaller; but on that point I am not prepared to offer evidence.

In regard to the in-breeding of the elk herds in large open parks and preserves throughout North America, there are positively no ill effects to fear. Wild animals that are closely confined generation after generation are bound to deteriorate physically; but with healthy wild animals living in large open ranges, feeding and breeding naturally, the in-breeding that occurs produces no deterioration.

In the twin certainties of over-population, and deterioration from excessive killing of the good sires, we have to face two new problems of very decided importance. Nothing short of very radical measures will provide a remedy. For the immediate future, I can offer a solution. While it seems almost impossible deliberately to kill females, I think that the present is a very exceptional case, and one that compels us to apply the painful remedy that I now propose.

Conclusion:—For five years, entirely prohibit the killing of adult male elk, and kill only females, and young males. This would gradually diminish the number of calves born each year, by about 2,500, and by the end of five years it would reduce the number, and the annual birth, of females to a figure sufficiently limited that the herds could be maintained on existing ranges.

Corollary.—At the end of five years, stop killing females, and kill only young males. This plan would permit a large number of bull elk to mature; and then the largest and strongest animals would do the breeding,—just as Nature always intends shall be done.

South America

Of all the big-game regions of the earth, South America is the poorest. Of hoofed game she possesses only a dozen species that are worth the attention of sportsmen; and like all other animal life in that land of little game, they are desperately hard to find. In South America you must work your heart out in order to get either game or specimens that will be worth showing.

At present, we need not worry about the marsh deer, the pampas deer, the guemal, or the venado, nor the tapir, jaguar, ocelot and bears. All these species are abundantly able to take care of themselves; and to find and kill any one of them is a man's task. In Patagonia the natives do wastefully slaughter the guanacos; and there are times also when great numbers of guanacos come down in winter to certain mountain lakes, presumably in search of food, and perish by hundreds through starvation. (H. Hesketh Prichard.)

Mexico

About ten years more will see the extinction of the mountain sheep of Lower California,—in the wake of the recently exterminated Mexican [Page 170] sheep of the Santa Maria Lakes region. In 1908, I solemnly warned the government of President Diaz, and at that time the Mexican government expressed much concern.

It is a great pity that just now political conditions are completely estopping wild-life protection in Mexico; but it is true. If the code of proposed laws that I drew up (by request) in 1908 and submitted to Minister Molina were adopted, it would have a good effect on the fauna of Mexico.

In Mexico there is little hoofed game to kill,—deer of the white-tail groups, seven or eight species; the desert mule deer; the brocket; the prong-horned antelope, the mountain sheep and the peccary. The deer will not so easily be exterminated, but the antelope and sheep will be utterly destroyed. They will be the first to go; and I think they can not by any possibility last longer than ten years. Is it not too bad that Mexico should permit her finest species of hoofed and horned game to be obliterated before she awakens to the desirability of conservation! The Mexicans could protect their small stock of big game if they would; but in Lower California they are leasing huge tracts of land to cattle companies, and they permit the lessees to kill all the wild game they please on their leased lands, even with the aid of dogs. This is a vicious and fatal system, and contrary to all the laws of nations.

The White-Tailed Deer. —Five hundred years hence, when the greed and rapacity of "civilized" man has completed the loot and ruin of the continent of North America, the white-tailed deer will be the last species of our big game to be exterminated. Its mental traits, its size, its color and its habits all combine to render it the most persistent of our large animals, and the best fitted to survive. It neither bawls nor bugles to attract its enemies, it can not be called to a sportsman, like the moose, and it sticks to its timber with rare and commendable closeness. When it sees a strange living thing walking erect, it does not stop to stare and catch soft-nosed bullets, but dashes away in quest of solitude.

The worst shooting that I ever did or saw done at game was at running white-tailed deer, in the Montana river bottoms.

For the reasons given, the white-tail exists and persists in a hundred United States localities from which all other big game save the black bear have been exterminated. For example, in our Adirondacks the moose were exterminated years and years ago, but the beloved wilderness called the "North Woods" still is populated by about 20,000 deer, and about 8,000 are killed annually. The deer of Maine are sufficiently numerous that in 1909 a total of 15,879 were killed. With some assistance from the thin sprinkling of moose and caribou, the deer of Maine annually draw into that state, for permanent dedication, a huge sum of money, variously estimated at from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000. In spite of heavy slaughter, and vigorous attempts at extermination by over-shooting, the deer of northern Michigan obstinately refuse to be wiped out.

There is, however, a large group of states in which this species has been exterminated. The states comprising it are Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and adjacent portions of seven other states.

As if to shame the people of Iowa, a curious deer episode is recorded. In 1885, W.B. Cuppy, of Avoca, Iowa, purchased five deer, and placed them in a paddock on his 600-acre farm. By 1900 they had increased to 32 head; and then one night some one kindly opened the gate of their enclosure, and gave them the freedom of the city. Mr. Cuppy made no effort to capture them, possibly because they decided to annex his farm as their habitat. When a neighbor led them with a bait of corn to their owner's door, he declined to impound them, on the ground that it was unnecessary.

By 1912, those deer had increased to 400, and the portion of this story that no one will believe is this: they spread all through the suburbs and hinterland farms of Avoca, and the people not only failed to assassinate all of them and eat them, but they actually killed only a few, protected the rest, and made pets of many! Queer people, those men and boys of Avoca. Nearly everywhere else in the world that I know, that history would have been ended differently. Here in the East, 90 per cent of our people are like the Avocans, but the other 10 per cent think only of slaying and eating, sans mercy, sans decency, sans law. Now the State of Iowa has taken hold, to capture some of those deer, and set them free in other portions of the state.

Elsewhere I shall note the quick and thorough success with which the white-tailed deer has been brought back in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and southern New York.

No state having waste lands covered with brush or timber need be without the ubiquitous white-tailed deer. Give them a semblance of a fair show, and they will live and breed with surprising fecundity and persistence. If you start a park herd with ten does, soon you will have more deer than you will know how to dispose of, unless you market them under a Bayne law, duly tagged by the state. In close confinement this species fares rather poorly. In large preserves it does well, but during the rutting season the bucks are to be dreaded; and those that develop aggressive traits should be shot and marketed. This is the only way in which the deer parks of England are kept safe for unarmed people.

Dr. T.S. Palmer has taken much pains to ascertain the number of deer killed in the eastern United States. His records, as published in May, 1910, are as follows:

At this date deer hunting is not permitted at any time in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas,—where there are no wild deer; nor in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Tennessee or Kentucky. The long [Page 173] close seasons in Massachusetts, Connecticut and southern New York have caused a great migration of deer into those once-depopulated regions,—in fact, right down to tide-water.

The Mule Deer. —This will be the first member of the Deer Family to become extinct in North America outside of the protected portions of its haunts. Its fatal preference for open ground and its habit of pausing to stare at the hunter have been, and to the end will be, its undoing. Possibly there are now two of these deer in the United States and British Columbia for every 98 that existed forty years ago, but no more. It is a deer of the bad lands and foothills, and its curiosity is fatal.

The number of sportsmen who have hunted and killed this fine animal in its own wild and picturesque bad-lands is indeed quite small. It has been four-fifths exterminated by the resident hunter and ranchman, and to-day is found in the Rocky Mountain region most sparingly. Ten years ago it seemed right to hunt the so-called Rocky Mountain "black-tail" in northwestern Montana, because so many deer were there it did not seem to spell extermination. Now, conditions have changed. Since last winter's great slaughter in northwestern Montana, of 11,000 hungry deer, the species has been so reduced that it is no longer right to kill mule deer anywhere in our country, and a universal close season for five years is the duty of every state which contains that species.

The Real Black-Tailed Deer, of the Pacific coast, (Odocoileus columbianus) is, to most sportsmen of the Rocky Mountains and the East actually less known than the okapi! Not one out of every hundred of them can recognize a mounted head of it at sight. It is a small, delicately-formed, delicately-antlered understudy of the big mule deer, and now painfully limited in its distribution. It is the deer of California and western Oregon, and it has been so ruthlessly slaughtered that today it is going fast. As conditions stand to-day, and without a radical change on the part of the people of the Pacific coast, this very interesting species is bound to disappear. It will not be persistent, like the white-tailed deer, but in the heavy forests, it will last much longer than the mule deer.

My information regarding this deer is like the stock of specimens of it in museum collections,—meager and unsatisfactory. We need to know in detail how that species is faring to-day, and what its prospects are for the immediate future. In 1900, I saw great piles of skins from it in the fur houses of Seattle, and the sight gave me much concern.

The Caribou, Generally. —I think it is not very difficult to forecast the future of the Genus Rangifer in North America, from the logic of the conditions of to-day. Thanks to the splendid mass of information that has been accumulated regarding this group, we are able to draw certain conclusions. I think that the caribou of the Canadian Barren Grounds and northeastern Alaska will survive in great numbers for at least another century; that the caribou herds of Newfoundland will last nearly as long, and that in fifty years or less all the caribou of the great northwestern wilderness will be swept away.

The reasons for these conclusions are by no means obscure, or farfetched.

In the first place, the barren-ground caribou are to-day enormously numerous,—undoubtedly running up into millions. It can not be possible that they are being killed faster than they are breeding; and so they must be increasing. Their food supply is unlimited. They are protected by two redoubtable champions,—Jack Frost and the Mosquito. Their country never will contain a great human population. The natives are so few in number, and so lazy, that even though they should become supplied with modern firearms, it is unlikely that they ever will make a serious impression on the caribou millions. The only thing to fear for the barren-ground caribou throngs is disease,—a factor that is beyond human prediction.

It is reasonably certain that the Barren Grounds never will be netted by railways,—unless gold is discovered over a wide area. The fierce cold and hunger, and the billions of mosquitoes of the Barren Grounds will protect the caribou from the wholesale slaughter that "civilized" man joyously would inflict—if he had the chance.

The caribou thousands of Newfoundland are fairly accessible to sportsmen and pot-hunters, but at the same time the colonial government can protect them from extermination if it will. Already much has been done to check the reckless and wicked slaughter that once prevailed. A bag limit of three bull caribou per annum has been fixed, which is enforced as to non-residents and sportsmen, but in a way that is much too "American" it is often ignored by residents in touch with the game. For instance, the guide of a New York gentleman whom I know admitted to my friend that each year he killed "about 25" caribou for himself and his family of four other persons. He explained thus: "When the inspector comes around, I show him two caribou hanging in my woodshed, but back in the woods I have a little shack where I keep the others until I want them."

The real sportsmen of the world never will make the slightest perceptible impression on the caribou of Newfoundland. For one thing, the hunting is much too tame to be interesting. If the caribou of that Island ever are exterminated, it will be strictly by the people of Newfoundland, themselves. If the government will tighten its grip on the herds, they need never be exterminated.

The caribou of New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario are few and widely scattered. Unless carefully conserved, they are not likely to last long; for their country is annually penetrated in every direction by armed men, white and red. There is no means by which it can be proven, but from the number of armed men in those regions I feel sure that the typical woodland caribou species is being shot faster than it is breeding. The sportsmen and naturalists of Canada and New Brunswick would render good service by making a close and careful investigation of that question.

The caribou of the northwestern wilderness are in a situation peculiarly their own. They inhabit a region of naked mountains and thin forests, [Page 175] wherein they are conspicuous, easily stalked and easily killed. Nowhere do they exist in large herds of thousands, or even of many hundreds. They live in small bands of from ten to twenty head, and even those are far apart. The region in which they live is certain to be thoroughly opened up by railways, and exploited. Fifty years from now we will find every portion of the now-wild Northwest fairly accessible by rail. The building of the railways will be to the caribou—and to other big game—the day of doom. In that wild, rough region, no power on earth,—save that which might be able to deprive all the inhabitants and all visitors of firearms,—can possibly save the game outside of a few preserves that are diligently patroled.

The big game of the northwest region, in which I include the interior of Alaska, will go! It is only a question of time. Already the building of the city of Fairbanks, and the exploitation of the mining districts surrounding it, have led to such harassment and slaughter of the migrating caribou that the great herd which formerly traversed the Tanana country once a year has completely changed its migration route, and now keeps much farther north. The "crossing" of the Yukon near Eagle City has been abandoned. A hundred years hence, the northwestern wilderness will be dotted with towns and criss-crossed with railways; but the big game of it will be gone, except in the preserves that are yet to be made. This will particularly involve the caribou, moose, and mountain sheep of all species, which will be the first to go. The mountain goat and the forest bears will hold out longer than their more exposed neighbors of the treeless mountains.

The Moose. —In the United States the moose is found in five states,—Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. There are 550 in the Yellowstone Park. In Maine and Minnesota only may moose be hunted and killed. In the season of 1909, 184 moose were killed in Maine,—a large number, considering the small moose population of that state. In northern Minnesota, we now possess a great national moose preserve of 909,743 acres; and in 1908 Mr. Fullerton, after a personal inspection in which he saw 189 moose in nine days, estimated the total moose population of the present day at 10,000 head. This is a moose preserve worth while.

Outside of protected areas, the moose is the animal that is most easily exterminated. Its trail is easily followed, and its habits are thoroughly known, down to three decimal places. As a hunter's reward it is Great. Strange to say, New Brunswick has found that the moose is an animal that it is possible, and even easy, to protect. The death of a moose is an event that is not easily concealed! Wherever it is thoroughly understood that the moose law will be enforced, the would-be poacher pauses to consider the net results to him of a jail sentence.

In New Brunswick we have seen two strange things happen, during our own times. We have seen the moose migrate into, and permanently occupy, an extensive area that previously was destitute of that species. At the [Page 176] same time, we have seen a reasonable number of bull moose killed by sportsmen without disturbing in the least the general equanimity of the general moose population! And at this moment, the moose population of New Brunswick is almost incredible. Every moose hunter who goes there sees from 20 to 40 moose, and two of my friends last year saw, "in round numbers, about 100!" Up to date the size of adult antlers seem to be maintaining a high standard.

In summer, the photographing of moose in the rivers, lakes and ponds of Maine and New Brunswick amounts to an industry. I am uneasy about the constant picking off of the largest and best breeding bulls of the Mirimachi country, lest it finally reduce the size and antlers of the moose of that region; but only the future can tell us just how that prospect stands to-day.

In Alaska, our ever thoughtful and forehanded Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture has by legal proclamation at one stroke converted the whole of the Kenai Peninsula into a magnificent moose preserve. This will save Alces gigas, the giant moose of Alaska, from extermination; and New Brunswick and the Minnesota preserve will save Alces americanus. But in the northwest, we can positively depend upon it that eventually, wherever the moose may legally be hunted and killed by any Tom, Dick or Harry who can afford a twenty-dollar rifle and a license, the moose surely will disappear.

The moose laws of Alaska are strict—toward sportsmen, only! The miners, "prospectors" and Indians may kill as many as they please, "for food purposes." This opens the door to a great amount of unfair slaughter. Any coffee-cooler can put a pan and pick into his hunting outfit, go out after moose, and call himself a "prospector."

I grant that the real prospector, who is looking for ores and minerals with an intelligent eye, and knows what he is doing, should have special privileges on game, to keep him from starving. The settled miner, however, is in a different class. No miner should ask the privilege of living on wild game, any more than should the farmer, the steamboat man, the railway laborer, or the soldier in an army post. The Indian should have no game advantages whatever over a white man. He does not own the game of a region, any more than he owns its minerals or its water-power. He should obey the general game laws, just the same as white men. In Africa, as far as possible, the white population wisely prohibits the natives from owning or using firearms, and a good idea it is, too. I am glad there is one continent on which the "I'm-just-as-good-as-you-are" nightmare does not curse the whole land.

The Musk-Ox. —Now that the north pole has been safely discovered, and the south pole has become the storm-center of polar exploration, the harried musk-ox herds of the farthest north are having a rest. I think that most American sportsmen have learned that as a sporting proposition there is about as much fun and glory in harrying a musk-ox herd with dogs, and picking off the members of it at "parade rest," as there is in shooting range cattle in a round-up. The habits of the animal positively [Page 177] eliminate the real essence of sport,—difficulty and danger. When a musk-ox band is chased by dogs, or by wolves, the full-grown members of it, bulls and cows alike, instantly form a close circle around the calves, facing outward shoulder to shoulder, and stand at bay. Without the aid of a gunner and a rifle, such a formation is invincible! Mr. Paul Rainey's moving pictures tell a wonderful story of animal intelligence, bravery and devotion to the parental instinct.

For some reason, the musk-ox herds do not seem to have perceptibly increased since man first encountered them. The number alive to-day appears to be no greater than it was fifty years ago; and this leads to the conclusion that the present delicate balance could easily be disturbed the wrong way. Fortunately, it seems reasonably certain that the Indians of the Canadian Barren Grounds, the Eskimo of the far north, and the stray explorers all live outside the haunts of the species, and come in touch only with the edge of the musk-ox population as a whole. This leads us to hope and believe that, through the difficulties involved in reaching them, the main bodies of musk-ox of both species are safe from extermination.

At the same time, the time has come for Canada, the United States and Denmark to join in formulating a stiff law for the prevention of wholesale slaughter of musk-ox for sport. It should be rendered impossible for another sportsman to kill twenty-three head in one day, as once occurred. Give the sportsman a bag of three bulls, and no more. To this, no true sportsman will object, and the objections of game-hogs only serve to confirm the justice of the thing they oppose.

The Grizzly Bear. —To many persons it may seem strange that anyone should feel disposed to accord protection to such fierce predatory animals as grizzly bears, lions and tigers. But the spirit of fair play springs eternal in some human breasts. The sportsmen of the world do not stick at using long-range, high-power repeating rifles on big game, but they draw the line this side of traps, poisons and extermination. The sportsmen of India once thought,—for about a year and a day,—that it was permissible to kill troublesome and expensive tigers by poison. Mr. G.P. Sanderson tried it, and when his strychnine operations promptly developed three bloated and disgusting tiger carcasses, even his native followers revolted at the principle. That was the alpha and omega of Sanderson's poisoning activities.

I am quite sure that if the extermination of the tiger from the whole of India were possible, and the to-be or not-to-be were put to a vote of the sportsmen of India, the answer would be a thundering "No!" Says Major J. Stevenson-Hamilton in his "Animal Life in Africa:" "It is impossible to contemplate the use against the lion of any other weapon than the rifle."

The real sportsmen and naturalists of America are decidedly opposed to the extermination of the grizzly bear. They feel that the wilds of North America are wide enough for the accommodation of many grizzlies, without crowding the proletariat. A Rocky Mountain without a grizzly upon it, or [Page 178] at least a bear of some kind, is only half a mountain,—commonplace and tame. Put one two-year-old grizzly cub upon it, and presto! every cubic yard of its local atmosphere reeks with romantic uncertainty and fearsome thrills.

A few persons have done considerable talking and writing about the damage to stock inflicted by bears, but I think there is little justification for such charges. Certainly, there is not one-tenth enough real damage done by bears to justify their extermination. At the present time, we hear that the farmers (!) of Kadiak Island, Alaska, are being seriously harassed and damaged by the big Kadiak bear,—an animal so rare and shy that it is very difficult for a sportsman to kill one! I think the charges against the bears,—if the Kadiak Islanders ever really have made any,—need to be proven, by the production of real evidence.

In the United States, outside of our game preserves, I know of not one locality in which grizzly bears are sufficiently numerous to justify a sportsman in going out to hunt them. The California grizzly, once represented by "Monarch" in Golden Gate Park, is almost, if not wholly, extinct. In Montana, outside of Glacier Park it is useless to apply for wild grizzlies. In the Bitter Root Mountains and Clearwater Mountains of Idaho, there are grizzlies, but they hide so effectually under the snow-bent willows on the "slides" that it is almost impossible to get a shot. Northwestern Wyoming still contains a few grizzlies, but there are so many square miles of mountains around each animal it is now almost useless to go hunting for them. British Columbia, western Alberta and the coast mountains at least as far as Skaguay, and Yukon Territory generally, all contain grizzlies, and the sportsman who goes out for sheep, caribou and moose is reasonably certain to see half a dozen bears and kill at least one or two. In those countries, the grizzly species will hold forth long after all killable grizzlies have vanished from the United States.

I think that it is now time for California, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming to give grizzly bears protection of some sort. Possibly the situation in those states calls for a five-year close season. Even British Columbia should now place a bag limit on this species. This has seemed clear to me ever since two of my friends killed (in the spring of 1912) six grizzlies in one week! But Provincial Game Warden A. Bryan Williams says that at present it would be impossible to impose a bag limit of one per year on the grizzlies of British Columbia; and Mr. Williams is a sincere game-protector.

The Brown Bears Of Alaska. —These magnificent monsters present a perplexing problem, which I am inclined to believe can be satisfactorily solved by the Biological Survey only in short periods, say of three or four years each. Naturally, the skin hunters of Alaska ardently desire the skins of those bears, for the money they represent. That side of the bear problem does not in the least appeal to the ninety odd millions of people who live this side of Alaska. The skins of the Alaskan brown bears have little value save as curiosities, nailed upon the wall, where they can not be stepped upon and injured. The hunting of those bears, however, is a business for men; and it is partly for that reason they [Page 179] should be preserved. A bear-hunt on the Alaska Peninsula, Admiralty or Montagu Islands, is an event of a lifetime, and with a bag limit of one brown bear, the species would be quite safe from extermination.

THE WICHITA NATIONAL BISON HERD

Presented by the New York Zoological Society

In Alaska there is some dissatisfaction over the protection accorded the big brown bears; but those rules are right as far as they go! A governor of Alaska once said to me: "The preservation of the game of Alaska should be left to the people of Alaska. It is their game; and they will preserve it all right!"

The answer? Not by a long shot!

Only three things were wrong with the ex-governor's view:

1.—The game of Alaska does not belong to the people who live in Alaska—with the intent to get out to-morrow! It belongs to the 93,000,000 people of the Nation.

2.—The preservation of the Alaskan fauna on the public domain should not be left unreservedly to the people of Alaska, because

3.—As sure as shooting, they will not preserve it!

Congress is right in appropriating $15,000 for game protection in Alaska. It is very necessary that the regulations for conserving the wild life should be fixed by the Secretary of Agriculture, with the advice of the Biological Survey.

The Black Bear is an interesting citizen. He harms nobody nor anything; he affords good sport; he objects to being exterminated, and wherever in [Page 180] North America he is threatened with extermination, he should at once be given protection! A black bear in the wilds is harmless. In captivity, posed as a household "pet," he is decidedly dangerous, and had best be given the middle of the road. In big forests he is a grand stayer, and will not be exterminated from the fauna of the United States until Washington is wrecked by anarchists.

The American Bison. —I regard the American bison species as now reasonably secure against extermination. This is due to the fact that it breeds persistently and successfully in captivity, and to the great efforts that have been put forth by the United States Government, the Canadian Government, the American Bison Society, the New York Zoological Society, and several private individuals.

The species reached its lowest ebb in 1889, when there were only 256 head in captivity and 835 running wild. The increase has been as follows:

To-day, nearly one-half of the living bison are in very large governmental parks, perpetually established and breeding rapidly, as follows:

Of wild bison there are only three groups: 49 head in the Yellowstone National Park, about 75 Pablo "outlaws" around the Montana Bison Range, and between 300 and 400 head in northern Athabasca, southwest of Fort Resolution, existing in small and widely scattered bands.

The efforts of man to atone for the great bison slaughter by preserving the species from extinction have been crowned with success. Two governments and two thousand individuals have shared this task,—solely for sentimental reasons. In these facts we find reason to hope and believe that other efforts now being made to save other species from annihilation will be equally successful.

Thanks to the diligence with which sportsmen and field naturalists have recorded their observations in the haunts of big game, it is not at all difficult to forecast the immediate future of the big game of the world. We may safely assume that all lands well suited to agriculture, mining and grazing will become populated by rifle-bearing men, with the usual result to the wild mammals and birds. At the same time, the game of the open mountains everywhere is thinly distributed and easily exterminated. On the other hand, the unconquerable forest jungles of certain portions of the tropics will hold their own, and shelter their four-footed inhabitants for centuries to come.

On the open mountains of the world and on the grazing lands most big game is now being killed much faster than it breeds. This is due to the attacks of five times too many hunters, open seasons that are too long, and bag limits that are far too liberal. As an example, consider Africa Viewed in any way it may be taken, the bag limit in British East Africa is appallingly high. Notice this astounding array of wild creatures that each hunter may kill under a license costing only $250!

The grand total is a possible 300 large hoofed and horned animals representing 44 species! Add to this all the lions, leopards, [Page 182] cheetahs, cape hunting dogs and hyaenas that the hunter can kill, and it will be enough to stock a zoological garden!

Quite a number of these species, like the sable antelope, kudu, Hunter's antelope, bongo and sitatunga are already rare, and therefore they are all the more eagerly sought.

Into the fine grass-lands of British East Africa, suitable for crops and stock grazing, settlers are steadily going. Each one is armed, and at once becomes a killer of big game. And all the time the visiting sportsmen are increasing in number, going farther from the Uganda Railway, and persistently seeking out the rarest and finest of the game. The buffalo has recovered from the slaughter by rinderpest only in time to meet the onset of oversea sportsmen.

Mr. Arthur Jordan has seen much of the big game of British East Africa, and its killing. Him I asked to tell me how long, in his opinion, the big game of that territory will last outside of the game preserves, as it is now being killed. He said, "Oh, it will last a long time. I think it will last fifteen years!"

Fifteen years! And this for the richest big-game fauna of any one spot in the whole world, which Nature has been several million years in developing and placing there!

At present the marvelous herds of big game of British East Africa and Uganda constitute the grandest zoological spectacle that the world ever has seen in historic times. For such an area, the number of species is incredible, and until they are seen, the thronging masses of individuals are beyond conception. It is easy to say "a herd of 3,000 zebras;" but no mere words can give an adequate impression of the actual army of stripes and bars, and hoofs thundering in review over a grassy plain.

But the settlers say, "The zebras must go! They break through our best wire fences, ruin our crops, despoil us of the fruits of long and toilsome efforts, and much expenditure. We simply can not live in a country inhabited by herds of wild zebras." And really, their contention is well founded. When it is necessary to choose between wild animals and peaceful agriculture for millions of men, the animals must give way.

In those portions of the great East African plateau region that are suited to modern agriculture, stretching from Buluwayo to northern Uganda, the wild herds are doomed to be crowded out by the farmer and the fruit-grower. This is the inevitable result of civilization and progress in wild lands. Marauding battalions of zebras, bellicose rhinoceroses and murderous buffaloes do not fit in with ranches and crops, and children going to school. Except in the great game preserves, the swamps and the dense jungles it is certain that the big game of the whole of eastern Africa is foredoomed to disappear,—the largest and most valuable species first.

Five hundred years from now, when North America is worn out, and wasted to a skeleton of what it now is, the great plateau region of East Africa [Page 183] between Cape Town and Lake Rudolph will be a mighty empire, teeming with white population. Giraffes and rhinoceroses now are trampling over the sites of the cities and universities of the future. Then the herds of grand game that now make Africa a sportsman's wonderland will exist only in closed territory, in books, and in memory.

MAP SHOWING THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE LION

Incidentally, it is also an Index of the Disappearance of African Big Game Generally. From an Article in the Review of Reviews, for August, 1912, by Cyrus C. Adams, and Based Largely upon the Exhaustive Studies of Dr. C.M. Engel, of Copenhagen.

From what has befallen in South Africa, we can easily and correctly forecast the future of the big game of British East Africa and Uganda. Less than fifty years ago, Cape Colony, Natal, Zululand, and every [Page 184] country up to the Zambesi was teeming with herds of big wild animals, just as the northern provinces now are. As late as 1890, when Rhodesia was taken over by the Chartered Company, and the capital city of Salisbury was staked out, an American boy in the Pioneer Corps, now Honorable William Harvey Brown, of Salisbury, wrote thus of the Gwibi Flats, near Salisbury:

"That evening I beheld on those flats a sight which probably will never again be seen there to the end of the world. The variety deploying before me was almost incredible! There, within the range of my vision were groups of roan, sable and tsessebi antelopes, Burchell zebras, [now totally extinct!] elands, reedbucks, steinbucks and ostriches. It was like Africa in the days of Livingstone. As I sat on my horse, viewing with amazement this wonderful panorama of wild life, I was startled by a herd that came galloping around a small hill just behind me."—("On the South African Frontier," p. 114.)

That was in 1890. And how is it to-day?

Salisbury is a modern city, endorsed by two lines of railway. The Gwibi Flats are farms. There is some big game yet, in Rhodesia south of the Zambesi, but to find it you must go at least a week's journey from the capital, to the remote corners that have not yet been converted into farms or mining settlements. North of the Zambesi, Rhodesia yet contains plenty of big game. The Victoria Falls station is a popular starting point for hunting expeditions headed northeast and northwest. In the northwest the game is yet quite in a state of nature. Unfortunately the Barotse natives of that region can procure from the Portuguese traders all the firearms and ammunition that they can pay for, and by treaty they retain their hunting rights. The final result will be—extermination of the game.

Elsewhere throughout Rhodesia the natives are not permitted to have guns and gunpowder,—a very wise regulation. In Alaska our Indians are privileged to kill game all the year round, and they have modern firearms with which to do it.

And how is it with the game of that day?

The true Burchell's zebra is now regarded as extinct! In Cape Colony and Natal, that once teemed with big game in the old-fashioned African way, they are counting the individual wild animals that remain! Also, they are making game preserves, literally everywhere.

Now that the best remaining game districts of Africa are rapidly coming under British control, it is a satisfaction to observe that the governing bodies and executive officers are alive to the necessity of preserving the big game from actual extinction. Excepting German East Africa, from Uganda to Cape Colony the game preserves form an almost continuous chain. It is quite impossible to enumerate all of them; but the two in British East Africa are of enormous size, and are well stocked with game. South Africa contains a great many smaller preserves and a few specimen herds of big game, but that is about all. Except in a few localities the hunting of big game in that region is done forever.

The Western Districts Game and Trout Protective Association of South Africa recently, (1911), has made careful counts and estimates of the number of individual game animals remaining in Cape Colony, with the following result:

Big Game In The Cape Province

From information kindly placed at the disposal of the Association by the Government, it was found that the following varieties of big game are still found in the Province. The numbers, however, are only approximate:

Blesbok: About 400 in Steynsburg, and 35 in Queen's Town divisions.

Bontebok: About 30 in Bredasdorp and 45 in Swellendam divisions.

Buffalo: About 340 in Uitenhage, 120 in Alexandria, and 75 in Bathurst divisions.

Elephants: About 130 in Alexandria, 160 in Uitenhage, 40 in Bathurst, and 20 in Knysna divisions.

Gemsbok: About 2,450 in Namaqualand, 4,500 in Vryburg, 4,000 in Gordonia, and 670 in the Kenhardt, Mafeking and Barkly West divisions.

Koodoo: About 10,000, found chiefly in the divisions of Albany, Barkly West, Fort Beaufort, Hay, Herbert, Jansenville, Kuruman, Ladismith, Mafeking, Mossel Bay, Oudtshoorn, Riversdale, Steytlerville, Uitenhage, Victoria East and Vryburg.

Oribi: About 120, in the divisions of Albany and Alexandria.

Rietbok: About 170, in the Komgha division.

Zebra: About 560, most of which are to be found in the divisions of Cradock, George and Oudtshoorn. A few are to be found in the divisions of Uniondale and Uitenhage.

Springbok: Being migratory, it is difficult to estimate their number. In some years they are compelled by drought to invade the Province in large numbers. They are then seen as far south as Calvinia and Fraserburg. Large numbers are, however, fenced in on private estates in various parts of the Province.

Klipspringers: About 11,200, in the following divisions, viz.: Namaqualand, 6,559; Kuruman, 2,100; Steytlerville, 1,530; Oudtshoorn, 275; Hay, 250; Ladismith, 220; Graaff-Reinet, 119; Kenhardt, 66; and Cradock, 56.

Hartebeest: About 9,700, principally in the divisions of Vryburg, Gordonia, Kuruman, Mafeking, Kimberley, Hay and Beaufort West.

Wildebeest: About 3,450 in Vryburg, 80 each in Gordonia and Kuruman, 65 in Mafeking, 20 in Queen's Town, and a few in the Bredasdorp divisions.

Eland: About 12 in the Graaff-Reinet division, privately bred.

The above showing of the pitifully small numbers of the specimens that constitute the remnant of the big-game of the Cape suggest just one thing:—a universal close season throughout Cape Colony, and no hunting whatever for ten years. And yet, what do we see?

The Report from which the above census was taken contains half a column of solid matter, in small type, giving a list of the open seasons all over Cape Colony, during which killing may be done! So it seems that the spirit of slaughter is the same in Africa that it is in America,—kill, as long as there is anything alive to kill!

This list is of startling interest, because it shows how closely the small remnants of big game are now marked down in South Africa.

In view of the success with which Englishmen protect their game when [Page 186] once they have made up their minds to do so, it is fair to expect that the herds now under protection, as listed above, will save their respective species from extinction. It is alarming, however, to note the wide territory covered by the deadly "open seasons," and to wonder when the bars really will be put up.

To-day, Mashonaland is a very-much-settled colony. The Cape to Cairo railway and trains de luxe long ago attained the Palls of the Zambesi, and now the Curator of the Salisbury Museum will have to search diligently in far off Nyassaland, and beyond the Zambesi River, to find enough specimens to fill his cases with representatives of the vanished Rhodesian fauna. Once (1892) the white rhinoceros was found in northern Rhodesia; but never again. In Salisbury, elands and zebras are nearly as great a curiosity as they are in St. Louis.

But for the discovery of white rhinoceroses in the Lado district, on the western bank of the Nile below Gondokoro, we would now be saying that Rhinoceros simus is within about ten specimens of total extinction.

From South Africa, as far up as Salisbury, in central Rhodesia, at least 99 per cent of the big game has disappeared before the white man's rifle. Let him who doubts this scan the census of wild animals still living in Cape Colony.

From all the other regions of Africa that are easily accessible to gunners, the animal life is vigorously being shot out, and no man in his senses will now say that the big game is breeding faster than it is being killed. The reverse is painfully true. Mr. Carl Akeley, in his quest for a really large male elephant for the American Museum found and looked over a thousand males without finding one that was really fine and typical. All the photographs of elephant herds that were taken by Kermit Roosevelt and Akeley show a striking absence of adult males and of females with long tusks. There are only young males, and young females with small, short tusks. The answer is—the white ivory hunters have killed nearly all the elephants bearing good ivory.

The slaughter of big game is going on furiously in British East Africa because the Uganda Railway opens up the entire territory to hunters. Anyone, man or woman, who can raise $5,000 in cash can go there and make a huge "bag" of big game. With a license costing only $250 he can kill enough big game to sink a ship.

The bag limit in British East Africa is ruinously extravagant. If the government desires the extermination of the game, such a bag limit surely will promote that end. It is awful to think that for a petty sum any man may buy the right to kill 300 head of hoofed and horned animals, of 44 species, not counting the carnivorous animals that also may be killed. That bag limit should immediately be reduced 75 per cent!

As matters stand to-day in British East Africa, the big game of the country, outside the three preserves, is absolutely certain to disappear, in about one-fourth of the time that it took South Africa to accomplish the same result. The reasons are obvious:—superior accessibility, more deadly rifles, expert professional guides, and a widespread craze for killing big game. With care and economy, British [Page 187] East Africa should furnish good hunting for two centuries, but as things are going on to-day, twenty years will see a tremendous change for the worse, and a disappearance of game that will literally astonish the natives.

German East Africa and Uganda will not exterminate their quotas of big game quite so soon. The absence of railways is a great factor in game-existence. The Congo Free State contains game and sporting possibilities—on the unexplored uplands between the rivers,—that are as yet totally unknown to sportsmen at large. We are accustomed to thinking of the whole basin of the Congo as a vast, gloomy and impenetrable forest.

There is to-day in Africa a vast reserve supply of grand game. It inhabits regions that are either unknown, or most difficult to penetrate. As a species in point, consider the okapi. Only the boldest and most persistent explorers ever have set foot in its tangled and miasmatic haunts. It may be twenty years before a living specimen can be brought out. The gorilla and the chimpanzee are so well protected by the density of their jungles that they never can be exterminated—until the natives are permitted to have all the firearms that they desire! When that day arrives, it is "good-night" to all the wild life that is large enough to eat or to wear.

The quagga and the blaubok became extinct before the world learned that their existence was threatened! The giant eland, the sable antelope, the greater kudu, the bontebok, blessbok, the mountain and Burchell zebras, all the giraffes save that of Nigeria, the big waterbucks, the nyala, the sitatunga, the bongo, and the gerenuk—all will go in the same way, everywhere outside the game preserves. The buffalo, zebra and rhinoceros are especially marked for destruction, as annoyances to colonists. You who read of the killing of these species to-day will read of their total disappearance to-morrow. So long as the hunting of them is permitted, their ultimate disappearance is fixed and certain. It is not the way of rifle-shooting English colonists to permit herds of big game to run about merely to be looked at.

Naturally, the open plains of Africa, and the thin forests of the plateau regions, will be the first to lose their big game. In the gloomy fastnesses of the great equatorial forests, and other really dense forests wherever found, the elephants, the Derby eland, the bongo, the okapi, the buffaloes (of three species), the bush-pigs, the bushbucks and the forest-loving antelopes generally will live, for possibly one hundred years,—or until the natives secure plenty of modern firearms and ammunition. Whenever and wherever savages become supplied with rifles, then it is time to measure each big-game animal for its coffin.

The elephants of the great equatorial forest westward of the lake region will survive long after the last eastern elephant has bitten the dust. The pygmy elephant of the lower Congo region (Elephas pumilio) will be the last African elephant species to disappear—because it inhabits dense miasmatic jungles, its tusks are of the smallest size, and it has the least commercial value.

After a successful survival of man's influence through two thousand years, at last the big game of India has made a good start on the road to vanishment. Up to 1870 it had held its own with a tenacity that was astonishing. In 1877, I found the Ganges—Jumna dooab, the Animallai Hills, the Wynaad Forest and Ceylon literally teeming with herds of game. The Animallais in particular were a hunter's paradise. In each day of hunting, large game of some kind was a certainty. The Nilgiri Hills had been quite well shot out, but in view of the very small area and open, golf-links character of the whole top of that wonderful sky plateau, that was no cause for wonderment.

In those days no native shikaree owned and operated a gun,—or at the most very, very few of them did. If a rogue elephant, a man-eating tiger or a nasty leopard became a public nuisance, it was a case for a sahib to come and doctor it with a .577 double-barreled express rifle, worth $150 or more; and the sahibs had shooting galore.

I think that no such great wild-life sights as those of the plateau regions of Africa ever were seen in southern Asia. Conditions there are different, and usually the game is widely scattered. The sambar deer and muntjac of the dense forests, the axis of the bamboo glades, the thameng deer of the Burmese jungles, the sladang, or gaur, of the awful Malay tangle, and the big cats and canines will last long and well. The ibexes, markhors, tahr and all the wild sheep eventually will be shot out by sportsmen who are "sheep crazy." The sheep and goats of Asia will disappear soon after the plains animals of Africa, because no big game that lives in the open can much longer endure the modern, inexpensive long-range rifles of deadly accuracy and limitless repetition of fire.

Eventually, I fear that by some unlucky turn of Fortune's wheel all the native hunters of Asia will obtain rifles; and when they do, we soon will see the end of the big game.

Even to-day we find that the primitive conditions of 1877 have been greatly changed. In the first place, about every native shikaree (hunter) owns a rifle, at a cost of about $25; and many other natives possess guns, and assume to hunt with them. The logical conclusion of this is more hunting and less game. The development of the country has reduced the cover for game. New roads and railways have made the game districts easily accessible, and real sportsmen are now three or four times as numerous as they were in 1877.

At Toonacadavoo, in the Animallai Hills where thirty-five years ago [Page 189] there modestly nestled on the ridge beside the river only Forest Ranger Theobold's bungalow, built of mud and covered with grass thatch and bamboo rats, there is now a regular hill station lighted by electricity, a modern sanatorium high up on the bluff, a club, golf links, and other modern improvements. In my day there were exactly four guns on the Animallais. Now there are probably one hundred; and it is easy to guess how much big game remains on the Delectable Mountains in comparison with the golden days of 1877. I should say that there is now only one game animal for every twenty-five that were there in my day.

I am told that it is like that all over India. Beyond question, the gun-sellers and gun-users have been busy there, as everywhere else. The game of India is on the toboggan slide, and the old days of abundance have gone forever.

The first fact that strikes us in the face is the impending fate of the great Indian rhinoceros, an animal as wonderful as the Titanothere or the Megatherium. It is like a gift handed down to us straight out of the Pleistocene age, a million years back. The British paleontologists to-day marvel at Elephas ganesa, and by great labor dig his bones out of the Sewalik rocks, but what one of them all has yet made a move to save Rhinoceros indicus from the quick extermination that soon will be his portion unless he is accorded perpetual and real protection from the assaults of man?

Let the mammalogists of the world face this fact. The available cover of the Indian rhinoceros is alarmingly decreasing, throughout Assam and Bengal where the behemoth of the jungle has a right to live. It is believed that the few remaining rhinos are being shot much faster then they are breeding; and what will be the effect of this upon an animal that requires fourteen years to reach full maturity? To-day, the most wonderful hoofed mammal of all Asia is booked for extermination, and unless very radical measures for its preservation are at once carried into effect, it is probable that twenty years more will see the last Indian rhino go down to rise no more. One remedy would be a good, ample rhinoceros preserve; and another, the most absolute and permanent protection for the species, all along the line. Half-way measures will not suffice. It is time to ring in a general alarm.

During the past eighteen years, only three specimens of that species have come out of India for the zoological gardens and parks of the world, and I think there are only five in captivity, all told.

We are told that in India now the natives are permitted to have about all the firearms they can pay for. Naturally, in a country containing over 300,000,000 people this is a deadly thing. Of course there are shooting regulations, many of them; but their enforcement is so imperfect that it is said that the natives are attacking the big game on all sides, with deadly effect. I fear it is utterly impossible for the Indian government to put enough wardens into the field to watch the doings of the grand army of native poachers.

Fortunately, the Indian native,—unlike the western frontiersman,—does not contend that he owns the big game, or that "all men are born free and equal." At the same time, he means to have his full share of it, to eat, and to sell in various forms for cash. Even in India, the sale-of-game dragon has reared its head, and is to-day in need of being scotched with an iron hand.

When I received direct from a friend in the native state of Kashmir a long printed circular setting forth the hunting laws and game-protective measures of that very interesting principality, it gave me a shock. It was disquieting to be thus assured that the big game of Kashmir has disappeared to such an extent that strong protective measures are necessary. It was as if the Chief Eskimo of Etah had issued a strong proclamation for the saving of the musk-ox.

In Kashmir, the destruction of game has become so serious that a Game Preservation Department has been created, with the official staff that such an organization requires. The game laws are printed annually, and any variations from them may be made only by the authority of the Maharajah himself. Up to date, eight game preserves have been created, having a total area of about thee hundred square miles. In addition to these, there are twelve small preserves, each having an area of from twenty-five to fifty square miles. By their locations, these seem to provide for all the species of big game that are found in Kashmir,—the ibex, two forms of markhor, the tahr. Himalayan bighorn sheep, burrhel and goral.

In our country we have several states that are very large, very diversified in surface, and still inhabited by large game. Has any one of those states created a series of game preserves even half way comparable with those of Kashmir? I think not. Montana has made a beginning with two preserves,—Snow Creek and the Pryor Mountains,—but beside the splendid series of Kashmir they are not worthy of serious mention.

And then following closely in the wake of that document came a lengthy article in the "Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London," by E.C. Stebbing, in which a correspondent of the Indian Field clearly sets forth the fact that the big game of the Himalayas now is menaced by a peril new to our consideration, but of a most deadly character. Hear him:

"In this inventory (of game destroyers in India), the Gurkha soldier does not find a place, for he belongs to a class which he amply fills by himself with his small but very important personality. He deserves separate notice. From the banks of the Sarda on the frontier of Nepal, to the banks of the Indus, the battalions of these gallant little men are scattered in cantonments all along the outer spurs of the Himalayan range. In seven or eight of these locations there are at least 14,000 of these disciplined warriors, who, in the absence of opportunities for spilling human blood legitimately, are given a free hand for slaughtering wild animals, along five-hundred miles of the best hunting grounds of Upper India."

Now, since those facts must be true as reported, do they not in themselves constitute a severe arraignment of the Indian government? Why should that state of game slaughter endure, when a single executive order to the C.O. of each post would effectually stop it?

In the making of game preserves, or "sanctuaries" as they are called out there, the Government of India has shown rare and commendable diligence. The total number is too great for enumeration here. The native state of Mysore has seven, and the Nilgiri Hills have sanctuaries aggregating about 100,000 acres in area. In the Wynaad Forest, my old hunting-grounds at Mudumallay have been closed to bison shooting, because of the alarming decrease of bison (gaur) through shooting and disease. The Kundah Forest Reserve has been made a partial game preserve, but the door might as well have been left wide open as so widely ajar.

In eastern Bengal and Assam, several game preserves have been created. On the whole, by the diligence and thoroughness with which sanctuaries, as they are termed, have been created quite generally throughout India, it is quite evident that the government and the sportsmen of India have become thoroughly alarmed by the great decrease of the game, and the danger of the extermination of species. In the past India has been the finest and best-stocked hunting-ground of all Asia, quite beyond compare, and the destruction of her once-splendid fauna of big game would be a zoological calamity.

Tibet.—As yet, Tibet offers free hunting, without legal let or hindrance, to every sportsman who can climb up to her lofty, wind-swept and whizzing-cold plateau. The man who hunts the Ovis poli, superb creature though it be, pays in full for his trophies. The ibex of the south help out the compensatory damages, but even with that, the list of species available in southern Tibet is painfully small. The Mitchell takin can be reached from China, via Chungking, after a long, hard journey, over Consul Mason Mitchell's trail; but the takin is about the only large hoofed game available.

The Altai Mountains, of western China, contain the magnificent Siberian argali, the grandfather of all sheep species, whose horns must be seen to be believed. Through a quest for that species the Russian military authorities played upon Mr. George L. Harrison and his comrade a very grim and unsportsmanlike joke. At the frontier military post, on the Russo-Chinese border, the two Americans were courteously halted, hospitably entertained, and prevented from going into the argali-infested mountains that loomed up before them only a few miles away! The Russian officers said:

"Sheep? Why, if you really want sheep, we will send out some of our brave soldiers to shoot some for you; but there is no need for you to take the trouble to go after them!"

After Mr. Harrison and his comrade had spent $5,000, and traveled half way around the world for those sheep, that is in brief the story of how [Page 192] the cup of Tantalus was given them by the Russians, actually at their goal! As spoil-sports, those Russian officers were the champions of the world.

Seven hundred miles southeastward of the Altai Mountains of western China, guarded by the dangerous hostility of savage native tribes, there exists and awaits the scientific explorer, according to report, an undiscovered wild horse. The Bicolored Wild Horse is black and white, and joy awaits the zoologist or sportsman who sees it first. Evidently it will not soon be exterminated by modern rifles.

The Impenetrable Forests.—Although the mountains of central Asia will in time be cleared of their big game,—when by hook and by crook the natives secure plenty of modern firearms,—there are places in the Far East that we know will contain big game forever and a day. Take the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Sumatra as examples.

Mr. C. William Beebe, who recently has visited the Far East, has described how the state of Selangor, between Malacca and Penang, has taken on many airs of improvement since 1878, and sections of Sarawak Territory are being cut down and burned for the growing of rubber. Despite this I am trying to think that those developments menace the total volume of the wild life of those regions but little. I wonder if those tangled, illimitable, ever-renewing jungles yet know that their faces have been scratched. White men never will exterminate the big game of the really dense jungles of the eastern tropics; but with enough axes, snares, guns and cartridges the natives may be able to accomplish it!

In Malayana there are some jungles so dense, so tangled with lianas and so thorny with Livistonias and rattan that nothing larger than a cat can make way through them. There are thousands of square miles so boggy, so swampy, so dark, gloomy and mosquito-ridden that all men fear them and avoid them, and in them rubber culture must be impossible. In those silent places the gaur, the rhino, the Malay sambar, the clouded leopard and the orang-utan surely are measurably safe from the game-bags and market gunners of the shooting world. It is good to think that there is an equatorial belt of jungle clear around the world, in Central and South America as well as in the old World, in which there will be little extermination in our day, except of birds for the feather market. But the open plains, open mountains, and open forests of Asia and Australasia are in different case. Eventually they will be "shot out."

China, all save Yunnan and western Mongolia, is now horribly barren of wild life. Can it ever be brought back? We think it can not. The millions of population are too many; and except in the great forest tracts, the spread of modern firearms will make an end of the game. Already the pheasants are being swept out of China for the London market, and extinction is staring several species in the face. On the whole, the pheasants of the Old World are being hit hard by the rubber-planting craze. Mr. Beebe declares that owing to the inrush of aggressive capital, the haunts of many species of pheasants are being denuded of all their natural cover, and some mountain species that are limited to small areas are practically certain to be exterminated at an early date.

Destruction Of Animals For Fur. —In the far North, only the interior of Kamchatka seems to be safe from the iron heel of the skin-hunter. A glance at the list of furs sold in London last year reveals one or two things that are disquieting. The total catch of furs for the year 1911 is enormous,—considering the great scarcity of wild life on two continents. Incidentally it must be remembered that every trapper carries a gun, and in studying the fur list one needs no help in trying to imagine the havoc wrought with firearms on the edible wild life of the regions that contributed all that fur. I have been told by trappers that as a class, trappers are great killers of game.

In order that the reader may know by means of definite figures the extent to which the world is being raked and combed for fur-bearing animals, we append below a statement copied from the Fur News Magazine for November, 1912, of the sales of the largest London fur house during the past two years.

With varying emotions we call attention to the wombat of Australia, 3,841; grebe, 51,261, and house cat, 92,407. Very nearly all the totals of Lampson & Co. for each species are much lower for the sales of 1912 than for those of 1911. Is this fact significant of a steady decline?

In chapter XIII, treating of the "Extermination of Birds for Women's Hats," Dr. Hornaday has dealt fully with the feather and plumage traffic after it enters the brokers' hands, and has proved conclusively that the plumes of egrets are gathered from the freshly killed birds. We may trace the course of the plumes and feathers backward through the tightly-packed bales and boxes in the holds of the vessels to the ports of the savage lands whence they were shipped; then to the skilful, dark hands of Mexican peon, Venezuelan Indian, African negro or Asiatic Chinaman or Malay, who stripped the skin from the flesh; and finally to the jungle or mountain side or terai where the bird gave up its life to blowpipe, cross-bow, blunderbuss or carefully set snare.

In various trips to Mexico, Venezuela and other countries in the tropics of the New World I have seen many such scenes, but not until I had completed a seventeen months' expedition in search of pheasants, through some twenty wild countries of Asia and the East Indies, did I realize the havoc which is being wrought week by week everywhere on the globe. While we were absent even these few months from the great centers of civilization, tremendous advances had been made in air-ships and the thousand and one other modern phases of human development, but evolution in the world of Nature as we observed it was only destructive—a world-wide katabolism—a retrogression often discernible from month to month. We could scarcely repeat the trip and make the same observations upon pheasants, so rapidly is this group of birds approaching extinction.

The causes of this destruction of wild life are many and diverse, and resemble one another only in that they all emanate from mankind. To the casual traveller the shooting and trapping of birds for millinery purposes at first seems to hold an insignificant place among the causes. But this is only because in many of the larger ports, the protective laws are more or less operative and the occupation of the plume hunter [Page 196] is carried on in secret ways. But it is as far-reaching and insidious as any; and when we add to the actual number of birds slain, the compound interest of eggs grown cold, of young birds perishing slowly from hunger, of the thousands upon thousands of birds which fall wounded or dead among the thick tropical jungle foliage and are lost, the total is one of ghastly proportions.

Not to weaken my argument with too many general statements, let me take at once some concrete cases. First, that of the Himalayan pheasants and game-birds. In a recent interesting article by E.P. Stebbing [H] the past, present and hoped-for future of game birds and animals in India is reviewed. Unfortunately, however, most of the finest creatures in Asia live beyond the border of the British sphere of influence, and though within sight, are absolutely beyond reach of civilized law. The heart of the Himalayas,—the haunts of some of the most beautiful birds in the world, the tragopans, the blood and impeyan pheasants—lies within the limits of Nepal, a little country which time and time again has bade defiance to British attacks, and still maintains its independence. From its northern border Mt. Everest looks down from its most exalted of all earthly summits and sees valley after valley depleted of first one bird and then another. I have seen and lived with Nepalese shepherds who have nothing to do month after month but watch their flocks. In the lofty solitudes time hangs heavy on their hands, and with true oriental patience they weave loop after loop of yak-hair snares, and then set them, not in dozens or scores, but in hundreds and thousands up and down the valleys.

In one locality seven great valleys had been completely cleared of pheasants, only a single pair of tragopans remaining; and from one of these little brown men I took two hundred nooses which had been prepared for these lone survivors. In these cases, the birds were either cooked and eaten at once, or sold to some passing shepherd or lama for a few annas. But in other parts of this unknown land systematic collecting of skins goes on, for bale after bale of impeyan and red argus (tragopan) pheasant skins goes down to the Calcutta wharves, where its infamous contents, though known, are safe from seizure under the Nepal Raja's seal! Thus it is that the London feather sales still list these among the most splendid of all living birds. And shame upon shame, when we read of 80 impeyan skins "dull," or "slightly defective," we know that these are female birds. Then, if ever, we realize that the time of the bird and the beast is passing, the acme of evolution for these wonderful beings is reached, and at most we can preserve only a small fragment of them.

PHEASANT SNARES Made of Yak Hair, Taken from a Shepherd in Nepal by Mr. Beebe

To the millinery hunter, what the egret is to America, and the bird of paradise to New Guinea, the impeyan pheasant is to India—the most coveted of all plumages. There is a great tendency to blame the native hunter for the decrease of this and other pheasants, and from what I have personally seen in many parts of the Himalayas there is no question [Page 197] that the Garwhalese and Nepalese hill-men have wrought havoc among the birds. But these men are by no means the sole cause. As long ago as 1879 we read that "The great demand for the brilliant skins of the moonal that has existed for many years has led to their almost total extermination in some parts of the hills, as the native shikaris shoot and snare for the pot as well as for skins, and kill as many females as males. On the other hand, though for nearly thirty years my friend Mr. Wilson has yearly sent home from 1,000 to 1,500 skins of this species and the tragopan, there are still in the woods whence they were obtained as many as, if not more than, when he first entered them, simply because he has rigidly preserved females and nests, and (as amongst English pheasants) one cock suffices for several hens."

Ignoring the uncertainty of the last statement, it is rather absurd to think of a single man "preserving" females and nests in the Himalayas from 1850 to 1880, when the British Government, despite most efficient laws and worthy efforts is unable to protect the birds of these wild regions to-day. The statement that after thirty to forty-five thousand cock impeyans were shot or snared, as many or more than the original quota remained, could only emanate from the mind of a professional feather-hunter, and Hume should not be blamed for more than the mere repetition of such figures. Let it be said to the credit of Wilson, the slaughterer of something near forty-five thousand impeyans, that he was a careful observer of the birds' habits, and has given us an excellent account, somewhat coloured by natives, but on the whole, the best we have had in the past. But it is not pleasant to read of his waiting until "twenty or thirty have got up and alighted in the surrounding trees, and have then walked up to the different trees and fired at those I wished to procure without alarming the rest, only those very close to the one fired at being disturbed at each report."

Hume's opinion that in 1879 there were scores of places where one might secure from ten to eighteen birds in a day, is certainly not true to-day. Indeed, as early as 1858 we read that "This splendid bird, once so abundant on the Western Himalayas is now far from being so, in consequence of the numbers killed by sportsmen on account of its beauty. Whole tracts of mountain forest once frequented by the moonal are now [Page 198] almost without a single specimen." The same author goes on naively to tell the reader that "Among the most pleasant reminiscences of bygone days is a period of eleven days, spent by the author and a friend on the Choor Mountain near Simia, when among other trophies were numbered sixty-eight moonal pheasants, etc."

SILVER PHEASANT SKINS SEIZED AT RANGOON, BRITISH BURMA

About 600 Skins out of Several Thousand Confiscated in the Custom House, on their way to the London Feather Market. Photographed by Mr. Beebe

For some unaccountable reason there is, or was for many years, a very prevalent idea that the enormous number of skins which have poured into the London market were from birds bred in the vicinity of Calcutta. When we remember the intense heat of that low-lying city, and learn from the records of the Calcutta Zoological Garden that impeyans and tragopans are even shorter-lived than in Europe, the absurdity of the idea is apparent. In spite of numberless inquiries throughout India, I failed to learn of a single captive young bird ever hatched and reared even in the high, cool, hill-stations. The commercial value of an impeyan skin has varied from five dollars to twenty dollars, according to the number received annually. In 1876 an estimate placed the monthly average of impeyans received in London at from two to eight hundred.

In such a case as Nepal, direct protective laws are of no avail. All humane arguments are useless, but if the markets at the other end can be closed, the slaughter will cease instantly and automatically.

DEADFALL TRAPS IN BURMA

A Long Series set Across a Valley, by the Kachins of the Burma-Chinese Border. A Wholesale Method of Wild-life Slaughter, Photographed by C. William Beebe, 1910

As a contrast to the millinery hunter of fifty years ago it is refreshing to find that at last sincere efforts are being made in British possessions to stop this traffic. I happened to be at Rangoon when six large bales of pheasant skins were seized by the Custom officials. A Chinaman had brought them from Yunnan via Bhamo, and was preparing to ship them as ducks' feathers. Two of the bales were opened for my inspection. The first contained about five hundred Lady Amherst pheasant skins, falling to pieces and lacking heads and legs. The second held over four hundred silver pheasants, in almost perfect condition. The chief collector had put the absolutely prohibitive fine of £200 on them, and was waiting for the expiration of the legal number of days before burning the entire lot. They must have represented years of work in decimating the pheasant fauna of western China.

Far up in the wilderness of northern Burma, and over the Yunnan border, we often came upon some of the most ingenious examples of native trapping, a system which we found repeated in the Malay States, Borneo, China and other parts of the Far East. A low bamboo fence is built directly across a steep valley or series of valleys, about half way from the summit to the lower end, and about every fifteen feet a narrow opening is left, over which a heavy log is suspended. Any creature attempting to make its way through, treads upon several small sticks and [Page 200] by so doing springs the trap and the dead-fall claims a victim. When a country is systematically strung with traps such as these, sooner or later all but a pitiful remnant of the smaller mammals, birds and reptiles are certain to be wiped out. Morning after morning I have visited such a runway and found dead along its path, what must have been all the walking, running or crawling creatures which the night before had sought the water at the bottom; pheasants, cobras, mouse-deer, rodents, civets, and members of many other groups. In some countries nooses instead of dead-falls guard the openings, but the result is equally deadly.

I have described this method of trapping because of its future importance in the destruction of wild life in the Far East. The Chinaman in all his many millions is undergoing a remarkably swift and radical evolution both of character and dress. In many ways, if only from the viewpoint of the patient, thrifty store-keeper he is a most powerful factor in the East, and is becoming more so. In many cases he imitates the white nations by cutting off his queue and altering his dress. In some mysterious correlated way his diet seems simultaneously affected, and while for untold generations rice and fish has satisfied all his gastronomic desires, a new craving, that for meat, has come to him. The result is apparent in many parts of the East. The Chinaman is willing and able to pay for meat, and the native finds a new market for the creatures about him. Again and again when I wished a few specimens of some certain pheasant I had but to hail passing canoes and bid a few annas or "cash" or "ringits" higher than the prospective Chinese purchaser would give, and the pheasants were mine.

In the catalogues of the brokers' sales of feathers we read of many thousands of the wonderful ocellated wing feathers of the argus pheasant, but no less horrible is the sight of a canoe crammed with the bedraggled bodies of these magnificent birds on their way to some Chinese hamlet where they will be sold for a pittance, the flesh eaten to the last tendon and the feathers given to the children and puppies to play with. The newly-aroused appetite of the Mongolian will soon be an important factor in the extermination of animals and birds, few species being exempt, for the Chinaman lives up to his reputation and is not squeamish as to the nature of his meat.

Before we leave the subject of Chinamen let us consider another recent factor in the destruction of wild life which is at present widely operative in China itself. This is the cold storage warehouse, of which six or eight enormous ones have gone up in different parts of the East. To speak in detail only of the one at Hankow, six hundred miles up the Yangtze, we found it to be the largest structure in the city. Surrounded by a high wall, with each entrance and exit guarded by armed Sikhs, it seemed like the feudal castle of some medieval baron. Why such secrecy is necessary I could not learn, as there are no laws against its business. But so carefully guarded is its premises that until a short time ago even the British consul-general of Hankow had not been allowed to enter. He, however, at last refused to sign the papers for any more [Page 201] outgoing shipments until he should be allowed to see what was going on within the warehouse. I hoped to be able to look over some of the frozen pheasants for interesting scientific material, but of course was not allowed to do so.

Although here in the heart of China, outside changes are not felt so strongly and the newly-acquired meat diet of the border and emigrant Chinese is hardly apparent, these warehouses have opened up a new source of revenue, which has met with instant response. Thousands and tens of thousands of wild shot or trapped pheasants and other birds are now brought to these establishments by the natives from far and near. The birds are frozen, and twice a year shipped on specially refrigerated P. and O. steamships to England and the continent of Europe where they seem to find a ready sale. Pigs and chickens also figure in the shipments. Now the pheasants have for centuries existed in enormous numbers in the endless ricefields of China, without doing any damage to the crops. In fact they could not be present in such numbers without being an important factor in keeping down insect and other enemies of the grain. When their numbers are decimated as they are being at present, there must eventually result a serious upsetting of the balance of nature. Let us hope that in some way this may be avoided, and that the present famine deaths of thirty thousand or more in some provinces will not be increased many fold.

When I started on this search for pheasants I was repeatedly told by old explorers in the east that my task would be very different from theirs of thirty years ago; that I would find steamers, railroads and automobiles where formerly were only canoes and jungle. I indeed found this as reported, but while my task was different it was made no easier. Formerly, to be sure, one had from the start to paddle slowly or push along the trails made by natives or game animals. But then the wild life was encountered at once, while I found it always far from the end of the steamer's route or the railroad's terminal, and still to be reached only by the most primitive modes of travel.

I cite this to give point to my next great cause of destruction; the burning and clearing of vast stretches of country for the planting of rubber trees. The East seems rubber mad, and whether the enormous output which will result from the millions of trees set out month after month will be profitable, I cannot say. I can think only of the vanishing of the entire fauna and flora of many districts which I have seen as a direct result of this commercial activity. One leaves Port Swettenham on the west coast of Selangor, and for the hour's run to Kuala Lumpur sees hardly anything but vast radiating lines of spindling rubber trees, all underbrush cleared, all native growths vanished. From Kuala Lumpur to Kuala Kubu at the very foot of the mountain backbone of the Malay Peninsula, the same holds true. And where some area appears not under cultivation, the climbing fern and a coarse, useless "lalang" grass covers every inch of ground. One can hardly imagine a more complete [Page 202] blotting out of the native fauna and flora of any one limited region. And ever-extending roads for the increasing motor cars are widening the cleared zone, mile after mile to the north and south.

In this region, as we pushed on over the mountains into the wilderness of Pahang, we saw little of the actual destruction of the primeval native growth, but elsewhere it became a common sight. Once, for many days we studied the wonderful life of a jungle which stretched up to our very camp. Troops of rollicking wa-was or gibbons frequented the forest; squirrels, tupaias, birds and insects in myriads were everywhere during the day. Great fruit-bats, flying lemurs, owls and other nocturnal creatures made the evenings and nights full of interest.

And then, one day without warning came the sound of an ax, and another and another. From that moment the songs, cries, chirps and roars of the jungle were seldom heard from our camp. Every day saw new phalanxes of splendid primeval trees fallen, or half suspended in their rigging of lianas. The leaves withered, the flower petals fell and we heard no more the crackling of bamboos in the wind. Then the pitiful survivors of the destruction were brought to us; now a baby flying lemur, flung from its hole by the falling of some tree; young tupaias, nestling birds; a few out of the thousands of creatures from insects to mammals which were slain so that a Chinaman or Malay might eke a few dollars, four or five years hence, from a grove of rubber trees. I do not say it is wrong. Man has won out, and might is right, as since the dawn of creation; but to the onlooker, to the lover of nature and the animal world it is a terrible, a hopeless thing.

One cannot at present leave the tourist line of travel in the East without at once encountering evidence of the wholesale direct slaughter of wild life, or its no less certain extermination by the elimination of the haunts and the food plants of the various beasts and birds.

The mental attitude of the men who shoot constitutes a deadly factor in the destruction of wild life and the extermination of species. Fully ninety-five per cent of the sportsmen, gunners and other men and boys who kill game, all over the world and in all nations, regard game birds and mammals only as things to be killed and eaten, and not as creatures worth preserving for their beauty or their interest to mankind. This is precisely the viewpoint of the cave-man and the savage, and it has come down from the Man-with-a-Club to the Man-with-a-Gun absolutely unchanged save for one thing: the latter sometimes is prompted to save to-day in order to slaughter to-morrow.

The above statement of an existing fact may seem harsh; and some persons may be startled by it; but it is based on an acquaintance with thousands of men who shoot all kinds of game, all over the world. My critics surely will admit that my opportunities to meet the sportsmen and gunners of the world are, and for thirty-five years have been, rather favorable. As a matter of fact, I think the efforts of the hunters of my personal acquaintance have covered about seven-tenths of the hunting grounds of the world. If the estimate that I have formed of the average hunter's viewpoint is wrong, or even partially so, I will be glad to have it proven in order that I may reform my judgment and apologize.

In working with large bodies of bird-shooting sportsmen I have steadily—and also painfully—been impressed by their intentness on. killing, and by the fact that they seek to preserve game only to kill it! Who ever saw a bird-shooter rise in a convention and advocate the preservation of any species of game bird on account of its beauty or its esthetic interest alive? I never did; and I have sat in many conventions of sportsmen. All the talk is of open seasons, bag limits and killing rights. The man who has the hardihood to stand up and propose a five-year close season has "a hard row to hoe." Men rise and say: "It's all nonsense! There's plenty of quail shooting on Long Island yet."

Throughout the length and breadth of America, the ruling passion is to kill as long as anything killable remains. The man who will openly advocate the stopping of quail-shooting because the quails are of such great value to the farmers, or because they are so beautiful and companionable to man, receives no sympathy from ninety per cent of the bird-killing sportsmen. The remaining ten per cent think seriously about the matter, and favor long close seasons. It is my impression that of the men who shoot, it is only among the big-game hunters that we find [Page 204] much genuine admiration for game animals, or any feeling remotely resembling regard for it.

The moment that a majority of American gunners concede the fact that game birds are worth preserving for their beauty, and their value as living neighbors to man, from that moment there is hope for the saving of the Remnant. That will indeed be the beginning of a new era, of a millennium in fact, in the preservation of wild life. It will then be easy to enact laws for ten-year close seasons on whole groups of species. Think what it would mean for such a close season to be enacted for all the grouse of the United States, all the shore-birds of the United States, or the wild turkey wherever found!

To-day, the great—indeed, the only—opponents of long close seasons on game birds are the gunners. Whenever and wherever you introduce a bill to provide such a season, you will find that this is true. The gun clubs and the Downtrodden Hunters' and Anglers' Protective Associations will be quick to go after their representatives, and oppose the bill. And state senators and assemblymen will think very hard and with strong courage before they deliberately resolve to do their duty regardless of the opposition of "a large body of sportsmen,"—men who have votes, and who know how to take revenge on lawmakers who deprive them of their "right" to kill. The greatest speech ever made in the Mexican Congress was uttered by the member who solemnly said: "I rise to sacrifice ambition to honor!"

Unfortunately, the men who shoot have become possessed of the idea that they have certain inherent, God-given "rights" to kill game! Now, as a matter of fact, a sportsman with a one-hundred-dollar Fox gun in his hands, a two-hundred-dollar dog at his heels and five one-hundred-dollar bills in his pocket has no more "right" to kill a covey of quail on Long Island than my milkman has to elect that it shall be let alone for the pleasure of his children! The time has come when the people who don't shoot must do one of two things:

1. They must demonstrate the fact that they have rights in the wild creatures, and demand their recognition, or
2. See the killable game all swept off the continent by the Army of Destruction.

Really, it is to me very strange that gunners never care to save game birds on account of their beauty. One living bob white on a fence is better than a score in a bloody game-bag. A live squirrel in a tree is poetry in motion; but on the table a squirrel is a rodent that tastes as a rat smells. Beside the ocean a flock of sandpipers is needed to complete the beautiful picture; but on the table a sandpiper is beneath contempt. A live deer trotting over a green meadow, waving a triangular white flag, is a sight to thrill any human ganglion; but a deer lying dead, —unless it has an exceptionally fine head,—is only so much butcher's meat.

One of the finest sights I ever saw in Montana was a big flock of sage grouse slowly stalking over a grassy flat thinly sprinkled with sage-brush. It was far more inspiring than any pile of dead birds that I ever saw. I remember scores of beautiful game birds that I have seen and not killed; but of all the game birds that I have eaten or tried to eat in New York, I remember with sincere pleasure only one. Some of the ancient cold-storage candidates I remember "for cause," as the lawyers say.

ONE MORNING'S CATCH OF TROUT, NEAR SPOKANE

Another Line of Extermination According to law. Three Times too Many Fish for one rod. In those Cold Mountain Streams, Fish Grow Slowly, and a Stream is Quickly "Fished out"

Sportsmen and gunners, for God's sake elevate your viewpoint of the game of the world. Get out of the groove in which man has run ever since the days of Adam! There is something in a game bird over and above its pound of flesh. You don't "need" the meat any longer; for you don't know what hunger is, save by reading of it. Try the field-glass and the camera, instead of the everlasting gun. Any fool can take a five-dollar gun and kill a bird; but it takes a genius to photograph one wild bird and get "a good one." As hunters, the camera men have the best of it. One good live-bird photograph is more of a trophy and a triumph than a bushel of dead birds. The birds and mammals now are literally dying for your help in the making of long close seasons, and in the real stoppage of slaughter. Can you not hear the call of the wild remnant?

It is time for the people who don't shoot to call a halt on those who do; "and if this be treason, then let my enemies make the most of it!"

Since the above was written, I have read in the Outdoor World for April, 1912, the views of a veteran sportsman and writer, Mr. Emerson Hough, on the wild-life situation as it seems to him to-day. It is a strong utterance, even though it reaches a pessimistic and gloomy conclusion which I do not share. Altogether, however, its breadth of view, its general accuracy, and its incisiveness, entitle it to a full hearing. The following is only an extract from a lengthy article entitled, "God's Acre:"

EMERSON HOUGH'S VIEW OF THE SITUATION

The truth is none the less the truth because it is unpleasant to face. There is no well posted sportsman in America, no manufacturer of sporting goods in America, no man well versed in American outdoor matters, who does not know that we are at the evening of the day of open sport in America. Our old ways have failed, all of them have failed. The declining fortunes of the best sportsman's journals of America would prove that, if proof were asked. Our sportsmanship has failed. Our game laws have failed, and we know they have failed. Our game is almost gone, and we know it is almost gone. America has changed and we know that it has changed, although we have not changed with it. The old America is done and it is gone, and we know that to be the truth. The old order passeth, and we know that the new order must come soon if it is to work any salvation for our wild game and our life in the open in pursuit of it.

There are many reasons for this fact, these facts. Perhaps the greatest lies in the steady advance of civilization into the wilderness, the usurpation for agricultural or industrial use of many of the ancient breeding and feeding places of the wild game. All over the West and now all over Canada, the plow advances, that one engine which cannot be gainsaid, which never turns a backward furrow.

Another great agency is the rapid perfection of transportation all over the world. Take the late influx of East African literature. If there really were not access to that country we would not have this literature, would not have so many pictures from that country. And if even Africa will soon be overrun, if even Africa soon will be shot out, what hope is there for the game of the wholly accessible North American continent?

It is all too easy now for the slaughterer to get to his work, all [Page 207] too easy for him to transport the fruits of the slaughter. At the hands of the ignorant, the unscrupulous and the unsparing, our game has steadily disappeared until it is almost gone. We have handled it in a wholly greedy, unscrupulous and selfish fashion. This has been our policy as a nation. If there is to be success for any plan to remedy this, it must come from a few large-minded men, able to think and plan, and able to do more than that—to follow their plans with deeds.

I have seen the whole story of modern American sportsmanship, so called. It has been class legislation and organized selfishness—that is what it has been, and nothing else. I do not blame country legislators, game dealers, farmers, for calling the sportsmen of America selfish and thoughtless. I do not blame them for saying that the so-called protective measures advanced by sportsmen have been selfish measures, and looking to destruction rather than to protection. At least that has been their actual result. I have no more reverence for a sportsman than for anyone else, and no reverence for him at all because he is or calls himself a sportsman. He has got to be a man. He has got to be a citizen.

I have seen millions of acres of breeding and feeding grounds pass under the drain and under the plow in my own time, so that the passing whisper of the wild fowl's wing has been forgotten there now for many years. I have seen a half dozen species of fine game birds become extinct in my own time and lost forever to the American people.

And you and I have seen one protective society after another, languidly organized, paying in a languid dollar or so per capita each year, and so swiftly passing, also to be forgotten. We have seen one code and the other of conflicting and wholly selfish game laws passed, and seen them mocked at and forgotten, seen them all fail, as we all know.

We have seen even the nation's power—under that Ark of the Covenant known as the Interstate Commerce Act—fail to stop wholly the lessening of our wild game, so rapidly disappearing for so many reasons.

We have seen both selfish and unselfish sportsmen's journals attempt to solve this problem and fail to do so. Some of them were great and broad-minded journals. Their record has not been one of disgrace, although it has been one of defeat; for some of them really desired success more than they desired dividends. These, all of them, bore their share of a great experiment, an experiment in a new land, under a new theory of government, a theory which says a man should be able to restrain himself, and to govern himself. Only by following their theory through to the end of that experiment could they know that it was to fail in one of its most vitally interesting and vitally important phases.

But now, as we know, all of these agencies, selfish or unselfish, have failed to effect the salvation of American wild game. Not by any scheme, device, or theory, not by any panacea can the old days of America be brought back to us.

Mr. Hough's views are entitled to respectful consideration; but on one vital point I do not follow him.

I believe most sincerely—in fact, I know,—that it is possible to make a few new laws which, in addition to the many, many good protective laws we already have, will bring back the game, just as fast and as far as man's settlements, towns, railroads, mines and schemes in general ever can permit it to come back.

If the American People as a whole elect that our wild life shall be saved, and to a reasonable extent brought back, then by the Eternal it will be saved and brought back! The road lies straight before us, and the going is easy—if the Mass makes up its mind to act. But on one vital point Mr. Hough is right. The sportsman alone never will save the game! The people who do not kill must act, independently.

"You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live."

"In no country in the world," says Mr. C.L. Marlatt, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "do insects impose a heavier tax on farm products than in the United States." These attacks are based upon an enormous and varied annual output of cereals and fruits, and a great variety and number of trees. For every vegetable-eating insect, native and foreign, we seem to have crops, trees and plant food galore; and their ravages rob the market-basket and the dinner-pail. In 1912 there were riots in the streets of New York over the high cost of food.

In 1903, this state of fact was made the subject of a special inquiry by the Department of Agriculture, and in the "Yearbook" for 1904, the reader will find, on page 461, an article entitled, "The Annual Loss Occasioned by Destructive Insects in the United States." The article is not of the sensational type, it was not written in an alarmist spirit, but from beginning to end it is a calm, cold-blooded analysis of existing facts, and the conclusions that fairly may be drawn from them. The opinions of several experts have been considered and quoted, and often their independent figures are stated.

With the disappearance of our birds generally, and especially the slaughter of song and other insect-eating birds both in the South and North, the destruction of the national wealth by insects forges to the front as a subject of vital importance. The logic of the situation is so simple a child can see it. Short crops mean higher prices. If ten per cent of our vegetable food supply is destroyed by insects, as certain as fate we will feel it in the increased cost of living.

I would like to place Mr. Marlatt's report in the hands of every man, boy and school-teacher in America; but I have not at my disposal the means to accomplish such a task. I cannot even print it here in full, but the vital facts can be stated, briefly and in plain figures.

Crops And Insects.

Corn. —The principal insect enemies of corn are the chinch bug, corn-root worm (Diabrotica longicornis), bill bug, wire worm, [Page 209] boll-worm or ear-worm, cut-worm, army worm, stalk worm, grasshopper, and plant lice, in all a total of about fifty important species! Several of these pests work secretly. At husking time the wretched ear-worm that ruins the terminal quarter or fifth of an immense number of ears, is painfully in evidence. The root-worms work insidiously, and the moles and shrews are supposed to attack them and destroy them. The corn-root worm is charged with causing an annual loss of two per cent of the corn crop, or $20,000,000; the chinch bug another two per cent; the boll or ear-worm two per cent more. The remaining insect pests are charged with two per cent, which makes eight per cent in all, or a total of $80,000,000 lost each year to the American farmer through the ravages of insects. This is not evenly distributed, but some areas suffer more than others.

THE CUT-WORM, (Peridroma Sancia)

Very Destructive to Crops

Wheat. —Of all our cereal crops, wheat is the one that suffers most from [Page 210] insects. There are three insects that cause to the wheat industry an annual loss of about ten per cent. The chinch bug is the worst, and it is charged with five per cent ($20,000,000) of the total loss. The Hessian fly comes next in order, and occasionally rolls up enormous losses. In the year 1900, that insect caused to Indiana and Ohio alone the loss of 2,577,000 acres of wheat, and the total cost to us of that insect in that year "undoubtedly approached $100,000,000." Did that affect the price of wheat or not? If not, then there is no such thing as a "law of supply and demand."

Wheat plant-lice form collectively the third insect pest destructive to wheat, of which it is reported that "the annual loss occasioned by wheat plant-lice probably does not fall short of two or three per cent of the crop."

Hay And Forage Crops. —These are attacked by locusts, grasshoppers, army worms, cut-worms, web worms, small grass worms and leaf hoppers. Some of these pests are so small and work so insidiously that even the farmer is prone to overlook their existence. "A ten per cent shrinkage from these and other pests in grasses and forage plants is a minimum estimate."

Cotton. —The great enemies of the cotton-planter are the cotton boll weevil, the bollworm and the leaf worm; but other insects inflict serious damage. In 1904 the loss occasioned by the boll weevil, chiefly in Texas, was conservatively estimated by an expert, Mr. W.D. Hunter, at $20,000,000. The boll worm of the southwestern cotton states has sometimes caused an annual loss of $12,000,000, or four per cent of the crops in the states affected. Before the use of arsenical poisons, the leaf worm caused an annual loss of from twenty to thirty million dollars; but of late years that total has been greatly reduced.

Fruits. —The insects that reduce our annual fruit crop attack every portion of the tree and its product. The woolly aphis attacks the roots of the fruit tree, the trunk and limbs are preyed upon by millions of scale insects and borers, the leaves are devastated by the all-devouring leaf worms, canker worms and tent caterpillars, while the fruit itself is attacked by the codling moth, curculio and apple maggot. To destroy fruit is to take money out of the farmer's pocket, and to attack and injure the tree is like undermining his house itself. By an annual expenditure of about $8,250,000 in cash for spraying apple trees, the destructiveness of the codling moth and curculio have been greatly reduced, but that money is itself a cash loss. Add to this the $12,000,000 of actual shrinkage in the apple crop, and the total annual loss to our apple-growers due to the codling moth and curculio is about $20,000,000. In the high price of apples, a part of this loss falls upon the consumer.

In 1889 Professor Forbes calculated that the annual loss to the fruit-growers of Illinois from insect ravages was $2,375,000. In 1892, insects caused to Nebraska apple-growers a loss computed at $2,000,000 and, in 1897, New York farmers lost $2,500,000 from that cause. "In many sections of the Pacific Northwest the loss was from fifty to seventy-five per cent." (Yearbook, page 470.)

Forests. —"The annual losses occasioned by insect pests to forests and forest products (in the United States) have been estimated by Dr. A.D. Hopkins, special agent in charge of forest insect investigations, at not less than $100,000,000. … It covers both the loss from insect damages to standing timber, and to the crude and manufactured forest products. The annual loss to growing timber is conservatively placed at $70,000,000."

THE GYPSY MOTH, (Portheria dispar)

Very Destructive to the Finest Shade Trees

There are other insect damages that we will not pause to enumerate here. They relate to cattle, horses, sheep and stored grain products of many kinds. Even cured tobacco has its pest, a minute insect known as the cigarette beetle, now widespread in America and "frequently the cause of very heavy losses."

The millions of the insect world are upon us. Their cost to us has been summed up by Mr. Marlatt in the table that appears below.

The millions of the insect world are upon us. The birds fight them for us, and when the birds are numerous and have nestlings to feed, the number of insects they consume is enormous. They require absolutely nothing at our hands save the privilege of being let alone while they work for us! In fighting the insects, our only allies in nature are the songbirds, woodpeckers, shore-birds, swallows and martins, certain hawks, moles, shrews, bats, and a few other living creatures. All these wage war at their own expense. The farmers might just as well lose $8,250,000 through a short apple crop as to pay out that sum in labor and materials in spraying operations. And yet, fools that we are, we go on slaughtering our friends, and allowing others to slaughter them, under the same brand of fatuous folly that leads the people of Italy to build anew on the smoking sides of Vesuvius, after a dozen generations have been swept away by fire and ashes.

In the next chapter we will consider the work of our friends, The Birds.

To-day, from Halifax to Los Angeles, and from Key West to Victoria, a deadly contest is being waged. The fruit-growers, farmers, forest owners and "park people" are engaged in a struggle with the insect hordes for the possession of the trees, shrubs and crops. Go out into the open, with your eyes open, and you will see it for yourself. Millions of dollars are being expended in it. Look at this exhibit of what is going on around me, at this very moment,—July 19, 1912:

The bag insects, in thousands, are devouring the leaves of locust and maple trees.

The elm beetles are trying to devour the elms; and spraying is in progress.

The hickory-bark borers are slaughtering the hickories; and even some park people are neglecting to take the measures necessary to stop it!

The tent caterpillars are being burned.

The aphis (scale insects) are devouring the tops of the white potatoes in the New York University school garden, just as the potato beetle does.

The codling moth larvae are already at work on the apples.

The leaves affected by the witch hazel gall fly are being cut off and burned.

These are merely the most conspicuous of the insect pests that I now see daily. I am not counting those of second or third-rate importance.

Some of these hordes are being fought with poisonous sprays, some are being killed by hand, and some are being ignored.

In view of the known value of the remaining trees of our country, each woodpecker in the United States is worth twenty dollars in cash. Each nuthatch, creeper and chickadee is worth from five to ten dollars, according to local circumstances. You might just as well cut down four twenty-inch trees and let them lie and decay, as to permit one woodpecker to be killed and eaten by an Italian in the North, or a negro in the South. The downy woodpecker is the relentless enemy of the codling moth, an insect that annually inflicts upon our apple crop damages estimated by the experts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture at twelve million dollars!

Now, is a federal strong-arm migratory bird law needed for such birds or not? Let the owners of orchards and forests make answer.

DOWNY WOODPECKER

The Case Of The Codling Moth And Curculio. —The codling moth and curculio are twin terrors to apple-growers, partly because of their [Page 214] deadly destructiveness, and partly because man is so weak in resisting them. The annual cost of the fight made against them, in sprays and labor and apparatus, has been estimated at $8,250,000. And what do the birds do to the codling moth,—when there are any birds left alive to operate? The testimony comes from all over the United States, and it is worth while to cite it briefly as a fair sample of the work of the birds upon this particularly deadly pest. These facts and quotations are from the "Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture," for 1911.

The Downy Woodpecker is the champion tree-protector, and also one of the greatest enemies of the codling moth. When man is quite unable to find the hidden larvae, Downy locates it every time, and digs it out. It extracts worms from young apples so skillfully that often the fruit is not permanently injured. Mr. F.M. Webster reports that the labors of this bird "afford actual and immediate relief to the infected fruit." Testimony in favor of the downy woodpecker has come from New York, New Jersey, Texas and California, "and no fewer than twenty larvae have been taken from a single stomach."

Take the Red-Shafted Flicker vs. the codling moth. Mr. A.P. Martin of Petaluma, Cal., states that during the early spring months (of 1890) they were seen by hundreds in his orchard, industriously examining the trunks and larger limbs of the fruit trees; and he also found great numbers of them around sheds where he stored his winter apples and pears. As the result of several hours' search, Mr. Martin found only one worm, and this one escaped only by accident, for several of the birds had been within a quarter of an inch of it. "So eager are woodpeckers in search, of codling moths that they have often been known to riddle the shingle traps and paper bands which are placed to attract the larvae about to spin cocoons."

Behold the array of birds that devour the larvae of the codling moth to an important extent.

In all, says Mr. W.L. McAtee, thirty-six species of birds of thirteen families help man in his irrepressible conflict against his deadly enemy, the codling moth. "In some places they destroy from sixty-six to eighty-five per cent of the hibernating larvae."

Now, are the farmers of this country content to let the Italians of the North, and the negroes of the South, shoot those birds for food, and devour them? What is the great American farmer going to do about this matter? What he should do is to write and urge his members of Congress to work for and vote for the federal migratory bird bill.

The Cotton Boll Weevil. —Let us take one other concrete case. The cotton boll weevil invaded the United States from Mexico in 1894. Ten years later it was costing the cotton planters an annual loss estimated at fifteen million dollars per year. Later on that loss was estimated at twenty million dollars. The cotton boll weevil strikes at the heart of the industry by destroying the boll of the cotton plant. While the total [Page 216] loss never can be definitely ascertained, we know that it has amounted to many millions of dollars. The figure given above has been widely quoted, and so far as I am aware, never disputed.

Fortunately we have at hand a government publication on this subject which gives some pertinent facts regarding the bird enemies of the cotton boll weevil. It is Circular No. 57 of the Biological Survey, Department of Agriculture. Any one can obtain it by addressing that Department. I quote the most important portions of this valuable document:

Birds Useful In The War Against The Cotton Boll Weevil.

By H.W. Henshaw, Chief of the Biological Survey.

The main purpose of this circular is to direct the attention of cotton growers and others in the cotton growing states to the importance of birds in the boll weevil war, to emphasize the need of protection for them, and to suggest means to increase the numbers and extend the range of certain of the more important kinds.

Investigations by the Biological Survey show that thirty-eight species of birds eat boll weevils. While some eat them only sparingly others eat them freely, and no fewer than forty-seven adult weevils have been found in the stomach of a single cliff swallow. Of the birds known at the present time to feed on the weevil, among the most important are the orioles, nighthawks, and, foremost of all, the swallows (including the purple martin).

Orioles. —Six kinds of orioles live in Texas, though but two inhabit the southern states generally. Orioles are among the few birds that evince a decided preference for weevils, and as they persistently hunt for the insects on the bolls, they fill a place occupied by no other birds. They are protected by law in nearly every state in the Union, but their bright plumage renders them among the most salable of birds for millinery purposes, and despite protective laws, considerable numbers are still killed for the hat trade. It is hardly necessary to point out that their importance as insect eaters everywhere demands their protection, but more especially in the cotton belt.

From the "American Natural History"

THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE

The Deadly Enemy of the Cotton-Boll Weevil

THE NIGHTHAWK A Goatsucker, not a Song-bird; but it Feeds Exclusively Upon Insects

Nighthawk. —The nighthawk, or bull-bat, also renders important service in the destruction of weevils, and catches them on the wing in considerable numbers, especially during its migration. Unfortunately, the nighthawk is eaten for food in some sections of the South, and considerable numbers are shot for this purpose. The bird's value for food, however, is infinitesimal as compared with the service it renders the cotton grower and other agriculturists, and every effort should be made to spread broadcast a knowledge of its usefulness as a weevil destroyer, with a view to its complete protection.

Swallows. —Of all the birds now known to destroy weevils, swallows are the most important. Six species occur in Texas and the southern states. [Page 217] The martin, the barn swallow, the bank swallow, the roughwing, and the cliff swallow breed locally in Texas, and all of them, except the cliff swallow, breed in the other cotton states. The white-bellied, or tree swallow, nests only in the North, and by far the greater number of cliff swallows nest in the North and West.

As showing how a colony of martins thrives when provided with sufficient room to multiply, an experiment by Mr. J. Warren Jacobs, of Waynesburg, Pa., may be cited. The first year five pairs were induced to occupy the single box provided, and raised eleven young. The fourth year three large boxes, divided into ninety-nine rooms, contained fifty-three pairs, and they raised about 175 young. The colony was thus nearly three hundred strong at the close of the fourth season. The effect of this number of hungry martins on the insects infesting the neighborhood may be imagined.

From the standpoint of the farmer and the cotton grower, swallows are among the most useful birds. Especially designed by nature to capture insects in midair, their powers of flight and endurance are unexcelled, and in their own field they have no competitors. Their peculiar value to the cotton grower consists in the fact that, like the nighthawk, they capture boll weevils when flying over the fields, which no other birds do. Flycatchers snap up the weevils near trees and shrubbery. Wrens hunt them out when concealed under bark or rubbish. Blackbirds catch them on the ground, as do the killdeer, titlark, meadow lark, and others; while orioles hunt for them on the bolls. But it is the peculiar function of swallows to catch the weevils as they are making long flights, leaving the cotton fields in search of hiding places in which to winter or entering them to continue their work of devastation.

[Page 218]

Means have been taken to inform residents of the northern states of the value of the swallow tribe to agriculturists generally, and particularly to cotton planters, in the belief that the number of swallows breeding in the North can be substantially increased. The cooperation of the northern states is important, since birds bred in the North migrate directly through the southern states in the fall on their way to the distant tropics, and also in the spring on their return.

Important as it is to increase the number of northern breeding swallows, it is still more important to increase the number nesting in the South and to induce the birds there to extend their range over as much of the cotton area as possible. Nesting birds spend much more time in the South than migrants, and during the weeks when the old birds are feeding young they are almost incessantly engaged in the pursuit of insects.

It is not, of course, claimed that birds alone can stay the ravages of the cotton boll weevil in Texas, but they materially aid in checking the advance of the pest into the other cotton states. Important auxiliaries, in destroying these insects, birds aid in reducing their numbers within safe limits, and once within safe limits in keeping them there. Hence it is for the interests of the cotton states that special efforts be made to protect and care for the weevil-eating species, and to increase their numbers in every way possible.—(End of the circular.)

Condensed Notes On The Food Habits Of Certain North American Birds.

Millions of Americans and near-Americans, both old and young, now need to be shown the actual figures that represent the value of our birds as destroyers of the insects, weeds and the small rodents that are swarming to overrun and devour our fields, orchards and forests. Will our people never learn that in fighting pests the birds are worth ten times more to men than all the poisons, sprays and traps that ever were invented or used?

THE PURPLE MARTIN A Representative of the Swallow Family. A Great Insect-eater; one of the Most Valuable of all Birds to the Southern Cotton planter, and Northern farmer. Shot for "Food" in the South. Driven out of the North by the English Sparrow Pest.

We cannot spray our forests; and if the wild birds do not protect, them from insects, nothing will! If you will watch a warbler collecting the [Page 219] insects out of the top of a seventy-foot forest oak, busy as a bee hour after hour, it will convince you that the birds do for the forests that which man with all his resources cannot accomplish. You will then realize that to this country every woodpecker, chickadee, titmouse, creeper and warbler is easily worth its weight in gold. The killing of any member of those groups of birds should be punished by a fine of twenty-five dollars.

The Bob-White. —And take the Bob White Quail, for example, and the weeds of the farm. To kill weeds costs money—hard cash that the farmer earns by toil. Does the farmer put forth strenuous efforts to protect the bird of all birds that does most to help him keep down the weeds? Far from it! All that the average farmer thinks about the quail is of killing it, for a few ounces of meat on the table.

It is fairly beyond question that of all birds that influence the fortunes of the farmers and fruit-growers of North America, the common quail, or bob white, is one of the most valuable. It stays on the farm all the year round. When insects are most numerous and busy, Bob White devotes to them his entire time. He cheerfully fights them, from sixteen to eighteen hours per day. When the insects are gone, he turns his attention to the weeds that are striving to seed down the fields for another year. Occasionally he gets a few grains of wheat that have been left on the ground by the reapers; but he does no damage. In California, where the valley quail once were very numerous, they sometimes consumed altogether too much wheat for the good of the farmers; but outside of California I believe such occurrences are unknown.

Let us glance over the bob white's bill of fare:

Weed Seeds.—One hundred and twenty-nine different weeds have been found to contribute to the quail's bill of fare. Crops and stomachs have been found crowded with rag-weed seeds, to the number of one thousand, while others had eaten as many seeds of crab-grass. A bird shot at Pine Brook, N.J., in October, 1902, had eaten five thousand seeds of green fox-tail grass, and one killed on Christmas Day at Kinsale, Va., had [Page 220] taken about ten thousand seeds of the pig-weed. (Elizabeth A. Reed.) In Bulletin No. 21, Biological Survey, it is calculated that if in Virginia and North Carolina there are four bob whites to every square mile, and each bird consumes one ounce of seed per day, the total destruction to weed seeds from September 1st to April 30th in those states alone will be 1,341 tons.

In 1910 Mrs. Margaret Morse Nice, of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., finished and contributed to the Journal of Economic Entomology (Vol. III., No. 3) a masterful investigation of "The Food of the Bob-White." It should be in every library in this land. Mrs. Nice publishes the entire list of 129 species of weed seeds consumed by the quail,—and it looks like a rogue's gallery. Here is an astounding record, which proves once more that truth is stranger than fiction:

THE BOB-WHITE For the Smaller Pests of the Farm, This Bird is the Most Marvelous Engine of Destruction Ever put Together of Flesh and Blood.

A few sample meals of insects.—The following are records of single individual meals of the bob white:

Of grasshoppers, 84; chinch bugs, 100; squash bugs, 12; army worm, 12; cut-worm, 12; mosquitoes, 568 in three hours; cotton boll weevil, 47; flies, 1,350; rose slugs, 1,286. Miscellaneous insects consumed by a laying hen quail, 1,532, of which 1,000 were grasshoppers; total weigh of the lot, 24.6 grams.

"F.M. Howard, of Beeville, Texas, wrote to the U.S. Bureau of Entomology, that the bob whites shot in his vicinity had their crops filled with the weevils. Another farmer reported his cotton fields full of quail, and an entire absence of weevils." Texas and Georgia papers (please copy.)

And yet, because of its few pitiful ounces of flesh, two million gunners and ten thousand lawmakers think of the quail only as a bird that can be shot and eaten! Throughout a great portion of its former range, including New York and New Jersey, the species is surely and certainly on the verge of total extinction. And yet sportsmen gravely discuss the "bag limit," and "enforcement of the bag-limit law" as a means of bringing back this almost vanished species! Such folly in grown men is very trying.

To my friend, the Epicure:—The next time you regale a good appetite with blue points, terrapin stew, filet of sole and saddle of mutton, touched up here and there with the high lights of rare old sherry, rich claret and dry monopole, pause as the dead quail is laid before you, on a funeral pyre of toast, and consider this: "Here lies the charred remains of the Farmer's Ally and Friend, poor Bob White. In life he devoured 145 different kinds of bad insects, and the seeds of 129 anathema weeds. For the smaller pests of the farm, he was the most [Page 222] marvelous engine of destruction that God ever put together of flesh and blood. He was good, beautiful and true; and his small life was blameless. And here he lies, dead; snatched away from his field of labor, and destroyed, in order that I may be tempted to dine three minutes longer, after I have already eaten to satiety."

Then go on, and finish Bob White.

The Case Of The Robin. —For a long time this bird has been slaughtered in the South for food, regardless of the agricultural interests of the North. No Southern gentleman ever shoots robins, or song birds of any kind, but the negroes and poor whites do it. The worst case of recent occurrence was the slaughter in the town of Pittsboro, North Carolina.

It was in January, 1912. The Mayor of the town, Hon. Bennet Nooe, was away from home; and during a heavy fall of snow "the robins came into the town in great numbers to feed upon the berries of the cedar trees. In order that the birds might be killed without restriction, the Board of Aldermen suspended the ordinance against the firing of guns in the town, and permitted the inhabitants to kill the robins."

A disgraceful carnival of slaughter immediately followed in which "about all the male population" participated. Regarding this, Mayor Nooe later on wrote to the editor of Bird Lore as follows:

"Hearing of this, on my return, I went to the Aldermen, all of whom were guilty, and told them that they and all others who were guilty would have to be fined. Three out of the five submitted and paid up, but they insisted that the ordinance be changed to read exactly as it is written here, with the exception that all could shoot robins in the town until the first of March; whereupon I resigned, as was stated."—(Bird Lore, XIV, 2. p. 140.)

The Mayor was quite right. The robin butchers of Pittsboro were not worthy to be governed by him.

The Meadow Lark is one of the most valuable birds that frequent farming regions. Throughout the year insects make up 73 per cent of its food, weed-seeds 12 per cent, and grain only 5 per cent. During the insect season, insects constitute 90 per cent of its food.

The Baltimore Oriole is as valuable to man as it is beautiful. Its nest is the most wonderful example of bird architecture in our land. In May insects constitute 90 per cent of this bird's food. For the entire year, insects and other animal food make 83.4 per cent and vegetable matter 16.6 per cent.

The Crow Blackbird feeds as follows, throughout the whole year: insects, 26.9 per cent; other animal food 3.4; corn 37.2; oats, 2.9; wheat, 4.8; other grain, 1.6; fruits, 5; weed seeds and mast 18.2! This report was based on the examination (by the Biological Survey) of 2,346 stomachs, and "the charge that the blackbird is an habitual robber of birds' nests was disproved by the examinations." (F.E.L. Beal.)

Flycatchers. —The high-water mark in insect-destruction by our birds is [Page 223] reached by the flycatchers,—dull-colored, modest-mannered little creatures that do their work so quietly you hardly notice them. All you see in your tree-tops is a two-foot flit or glide, now here and now there, as the leaves and high branches are combed of their insect life.

Bulletin No. 44 of the Department of Agriculture gives the residuum of an exhausting examination of 3,398 warbler stomachs, from seventeen species of birds, and the result is: 94.99 per cent of insect food,—mostly bad insects, too,—and 5.01 per cent vegetable food. What more can any forester ask of a bird?

THE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK "The Potato-bug Bird," Greatest Enemy of the Potato Beetles From the "American Natural History"

The Sparrows. —All our sparrows are great consumers of weed seeds. Professor Beal has calculated the total quantity consumed in Iowa in one year,—in the days when sparrows were normally numerous,—at 1,750,000 pounds.

The American Goldfinch as a weed destroyer has few equals. It makes a specialty of the seeds of the members of the Order Compositae, and is especially fond of the seeds of ragweed, thistles, wild lettuce and wild sunflower. But, small and beautiful as this bird is, there are hundreds of thousands of grown men in America who would shoot it and eat it if they dared!

The Hawks And Owls. —Let no other state repeat the error that once was made in Pennsylvania when that state enacted in 1885, her now famous hawk-and-owl bounty law. In order to accomplish the wholesale destruction of her birds of prey, a law was passed providing for the payment of a bounty of fifty cents each for the scalps of hawks and owls. Immediately the slaughter began. In two years 180,000 scalps were brought in, and $90,000 were paid out for them. It was estimated that the saving to the farmers in poultry amounted to one dollar for each $1,205 paid out in bounties.

The awakening came even more swiftly than the ornithologists expected. [Page 224] By the end of two years from the passage of "the hawk law," the farmers found their fields and orchards thoroughly overrun by destructive rats, mice and insects, and they appealed to the legislature for the quick repeal of the law. With all possible haste this was brought about; but it was estimated by competent judges that in damages to their crops the hawk law cost the people of Pennsylvania nothing less than two million dollars.

Moral: Don't make any laws providing for the destruction of hawks and owls until you have exact knowledge, and know in advance what the results will be.

In the space at my disposal for this subject, it is impossible to treat our species of hawks and owls separately. The reader can find in the "American Natural History" fifteen pages of text, numerous illustrations and many figures elucidating this subject. Unfortunately Dr. Fisher's admirable work on "The Hawks and Owls" has long been out of print, and unobtainable. There are, however, a few observations that must be recorded here.

Each bird of prey is a balanced equation. Each one, I think without a single exception, does some damage, chiefly in the destruction of valuable wild birds. The value of the poultry destroyed by hawks and owls is very small in comparison with their killing of wild prey. Many of the species do not touch domestic poultry! At the same time, when a hawk of any kind, or an owl, sets to work deliberately and persistently to clean out a farmer's poultry yard, and is actually doing it, that farmer is justified in killing that bird. But, the occasional loss of a broiler is not to be regarded as justification for a war of extermination on all the hawks that fly! Individual wild-animal nuisances can occasionally become so exasperating as to justify the use of the gun,—when scarecrows fail; but in all such circumstances the greatest judgment, and much forbearance also, is desirable and necessary.

The value of hawks and owls rests upon their perpetual warfare on the millions of destructive rats, mice, moles, shrews, weasels, rabbits and English sparrows that constantly prey upon what the farmer produces. On this point a few illustrations must be given. One of the most famous comes via Dr. Fisher, from one of the towers of the Smithsonian buildings, and relates to

THE BARN OWL Wonderfully Destructive of Rats and Mice, and Almost Never Touches Birds

The Barn Owl, (Strix flammea). —Two hundred pellets consisting of bones, hair and feathers from one nesting pair of these birds were collected, and found to contain 454 skulls, of which 225 were of meadow mice, 179 of house mice, 2 of pine mice, 20 were of rats, 6 of jumping mice, 20 were from shrews, 1 was of a mole and 1 a vesper sparrow. One bird, and 453 noxious mammals! Compare this with the record of any cat on earth. Anything that the barn owl wants from me, or from any farmer, should at once be offered to it, on a silver tray. This bird is often called the Monkey-Faced Owl, and it should be called the Farmer's-Friend Owl.

The Long-Eared Owl, (Asio wilsonianus) has practically the same kind of a record as the barn owl,—scores of mice, rats and shrews [Page 225] destroyed, and only an occasional small bird. Its nearest relative, the Short-eared Owl (A. accipitrinus) may be described in the same words.

The Great Horned Owl fills us with conflicting passions. For the long list of dead rats and mice, pocket gophers, skunks, and weasels to his credit, we think well of him, and wish his prosperity. For the song-birds, ruffed grouse, quail, other game birds, domestic poultry, squirrels, chipmunks and hares that he kills, we hate him, and would cheerfully wring his neck, wearing gauntlets. He does an unusual amount of good, and a terrible amount of harm. It is impossible to strike a balance for him, and determine with mathematical accuracy whether he should be shot or permitted to live. At all events, whenever Bubo comes up for trial, we must give the feathered devil his due.

The names "Chicken Hawk or Hen Hawk" as applied usually refer to the Red-Shouldered or Red-Tailed species. Neither of these is really very destructive to poultry, but both are very destructive to mice, rats and other pestiferous creatures. Both are large, showy birds, not so very swift in flight, and rather easy to approach. Neither of them should be destroyed,—not even though they do, once in a great while, take a chicken or wild bird. They pay for them, four times over, by rat-killing. Mr. J. Alden Loring states that he once knew a pair of red-shouldered hawks to nest within fifty rods of a poultry farm on which there were 800 young chickens and 400 ducks, not one of which was taken. (See the American Natural History, pages 229-30.)

Hawks That Should Be Destroyed. —There are two small, fierce, daring, swift-winged hawks both of which are so very destructive that they deserve to be shot whenever possible. They are Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperi) and the Sharp-Shinned Hawk (A. velox). They are closely [Page 226] related, and look much alike, but the former has a rounded tail and the latter a square one. In killing them, please do not kill any other hawk by mistake; and if you do not positively recognize the bird, don't shoot.

The Goshawk is a bad one, and so is the Peregrine Falcon, or Duck Hawk. Both deserve death, but they are so rare that we need not take them into account.

Some of the hawks and owls are very destructive to song-birds, and members of the grouse family. In 159 stomachs of sharp-shinned hawks, 99 contained song-birds and woodpeckers. In 133 stomachs of Cooper's hawks, 34 contained poultry or game birds, and 52 contained other birds. The game birds included 8 quail, 1 ruffed grouse and 5 pigeons.

The Woodpeckers. [I] —These birds are the natural guardians of the trees. If we had enough of them, our forests would be fairly safe from insect pests. Of the six or seven North American species that are of the most importance to our forests, the Downy Woodpecker, (Dryobates pubescens) is accorded first rank. It is one of the smallest species. The contents of 140 stomachs consisted of 74 per cent insects, 25 per cent vegetable matter and 1 per cent sand. The insects were ants, beetles, bugs, flies, caterpillars, grasshoppers and a few spiders.

GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER A Bird of Great Value to Orchards and Forests, now Rapidly Disappearing, Undoubtedly Through Slaughter as "Food"

The Hairy Woodpecker, (Dryobates villosus) , a very close relation of the preceding species, is also small, and his food supply is as follows: insects, 68 per cent, vegetable matter 31, mineral 1.

The Golden-Winged Woodpecker, (Colaptes auratus) , is the largest and handsomest of all the woodpeckers that we really see in evidence. The Pileated is one of the largest, but we never see it. This bird makes a specialty of ants, of which it devours immense numbers. Its food is 56 per cent animal matter (three-fourths of which is ants), 39 per cent is vegetable matter, and 5 per cent mineral matter.

The Red-Headed Woodpecker is a serious fruit-eater, and many complaints have been lodged against him. Exactly one-half his food supply consists of vegetable matter, chiefly wild berries, acorns, beechnuts, and the seeds of wild shrubs and weeds. We may infer that about one-tenth of his food, in summer and fall, consists of cultivated fruit and berries. His proportion of cultivated foods is entirely too small to justify any one in destroying this species.

In view of the prevalence of insect pests in the state of New York, I have spent hours in trying to devise a practical plan for making woodpeckers about ten times more numerous than they now are. Contributions to this problem will be thankfully received. Yes; we do put out pork fat and suet in winter, quantities of it; but I grieve to say that to-day in the Zoological Park there is not more than one woodpecker for every ten that were there twelve years ago. Where have they gone? Only one answer is possible. They have been shot and eaten, by the guerrillas of destruction.

Surely no man of intelligence needs to be told to protect woodpeckers to the utmost, and to feed them in winter. Nail up fat pork, or large chunks of suet, on the south sides of conspicuous trees, and encourage the woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees and titmice to remain in your woods through the long and dreary winter.

The English Sparrow is a nuisance and a pest, because it drives away from the house and the orchard the house wren, bluebird, phoebe, purple martin and swallow, any one of which is more valuable to man than a thousand English sparrows. I never yet have seen one of the pest sparrows catch an insect, but Chief Forester Merkel says that he has seen one catching and eating small moths.

There is one place in the country where English sparrows have not yet come; and whenever they do appear there, they will meet a hostile reception. I shall kill every one that comes,—for the sake of retaining the wrens, catbirds, phoebes and thrushes that now literally make home happy for my family. A good way to discourage sparrows is to shoot them en masse when they are feeding on road refuse, such as the white-throated, white-crowned and other sparrows never touch. Persistent destruction of their nests will check the nuisance.

The Shore Birds. —Who is there who thinks of the shore-birds as being directly beneficial to man by reason of their food habits? I warrant not more than one man in every ten thousand! We think of them only as possible "food." The amount of actual cash value benefit that the shore-birds confer upon man through the destruction of bad things is, in comparison with the number of birds, enormous.

The Department of Agriculture never publishes and circulates anything that has already been published, no matter how valuable to the public at [Page 228] large. Our rules are different. Because I know that many of the people of our country need the information, I am going to reprint here, as an object lesson and a warning, the whole of the Biological Survey's valuable and timely circular No. 79, issued April 11, 1911, and written by Prof. W.L. McAtee. It should open the eyes of the American people to two things: the economic value of these birds, and the fact that they are everywhere far on the road toward extermination!

Our Vanishing Shorebirds

By Prof. W.L. McAtee

The term shorebird is applied to a group of long-legged, slender-billed, and usually plainly colored birds belonging to the order Limicolae. More than sixty species of them occur in North America. True to their name they frequent the shores of all bodies of water, large and small, but many of them are equally at home on plains and prairies.

Throughout the eastern United States shorebirds are fast vanishing. While formerly numerous species swarmed along the Atlantic coast and in the prairie regions, many of them have been so reduced that extermination seems imminent. The black-bellied plover or beetlehead, which occurred along the Atlantic seaboard in great numbers years ago, is now seen only as a straggler. The golden plover, once exceedingly abundant east of the Great Plains, is now rare. Vast hordes of long-billed dowitchers formerly wintered in Louisiana; now they occur only in infrequent flocks of a half dozen or less. The Eskimo curlew within the last decade has probably been exterminated and the other curlews greatly reduced. In fact, all the larger species of shorebirds have suffered severely.

So adverse to shorebirds are present conditions that the wonder is that any escape. In both fall and spring they are shot along the whole route of their migration north and south. Their habit of decoying readily and persistently, coming back in flocks to the decoys again and again, in spite of murderous volleys, greatly lessens their chances of escape.

The breeding grounds of some of the species in the United States and Canada have become greatly restricted by the extension of agriculture, and their winter ranges in South America have probably been restricted in the same way.

Unfortunately, shorebirds lay fewer eggs than any of the other species generally termed game birds. They deposit only three or four eggs, and hatch only one brood yearly. Nor are they in any wise immune from the great mortality known to prevail among the smaller birds. Their eggs and young are constantly preyed upon during the breeding season by crows, gulls, and jaegers, and the far northern country to which so many of them resort to nest is subject to sudden cold storms, which kill many of the young. In the more temperate climate of the United States small birds, in general, do not bring up more than one young bird for every two eggs laid. Sometimes the proportion of loss is much greater, actual [Page 229] count revealing a destruction of 70 to 80 per cent of nests and eggs. Shorebirds, with sets of three or four eggs, probably do not on the average rear more than two young for each breeding pair.

It is not surprising, therefore, that birds of this family, with their limited powers of reproduction, melt away under the relentless warfare waged upon them. Until recent years shorebirds have had almost no protection. Thus, the species most in need of stringent protection have really had the least. No useful birds which lay only three or four eggs should be retained on the list of game birds. The shorebirds should be relieved from persecution, and if we desire to save from extermination a majority of the species, action must be prompt.

The protection of shorebirds need not be based solely on esthetic or sentimental grounds, for few groups of birds more thoroughly deserve protection from an economic standpoint. Shorebirds perform an important service by their inroads upon mosquitoes, some of which play so conspicuous a part in the dissemination of diseases. Thus, nine species are known to feed upon mosquitoes, and hundreds of the larvae or "wigglers" were found in several stomachs. Fifty-three per cent of the food of twenty-eight northern phalaropes from one locality consisted of mosquito larvae. The insects eaten include the salt-marsh mosquito (Aedes sollicitans), for the suppression of which the State of New Jersey has gone to great expense. The nine species of shorebirds known to eat mosquitoes are:

Northern phalarope (Lobipes lobatus).

Semipalmated sandpiper (Ereunetes pusillus).

Wilson phalarope (Steganopus tricolor).

Stilt sandpiper (Micropalama himantopus).

Killdeer (Oxyechus vociferus).

Pectoral sandpiper (Pisobia maculata).

Semipalmated plover (Aegialitis semipalmata).

Baird sandpiper (Pisobia bairdi).

Least sandpiper (Pisobia minutilla).

Cattle and other live stock also are seriously molested by mosquitoes as well as by another set of pests, the horse-flies. Adults and larvae of these flies have been found in the stomachs of the dowitcher, the pectoral sandpiper, the hudsonian godwit, and the killdeer. Two species of shorebirds, the killdeer and upland plover, still further befriend cattle by devouring the North American fever tick.

Among other fly larvae consumed are those of the crane flies (leather-jackets) devoured by the following species:

Northern phalarope (Lobipes lobatus).

Pectoral sandpiper (Pisobia maculata).

Wilson phalarope (Steganopus tricolor).

Baird sandpiper (Pisobia bairdi).

Woodcock (Philohela minor).

Upland plover (Bartramia longicauda).

Jacksnipe (Gallinago delicata).

Killdeer (Oxyechus vociferus).

Crane-fly larvae are frequently seriously destructive locally in grass and wheat fields. Among their numerous bird enemies, shorebirds rank high.

The Killdeer Plover & The Jacksnipe

TWO MEMBERS OF THE GROUP OF SHORE-BIRDS

These, with 28 other species, destroy enormous numbers of locusts, grasshoppers, crane-fly larvae, mosquito larvae, army-worms, cut-worms, cotton-worms, boll-weevils, curculios, wire-worms and clover-leaf weevils. It is insane folly to shoot any birds that do such work! Many species of the shore-birds are rapidly being exterminated.

Another group of insects of which the shorebirds are very fond is grasshoppers. Severe local infestations of grasshoppers, frequently involving the destruction of many acres of corn, cotton, and other [Page 230] crops, are by no means exceptional. Aughey found twenty-three species of shorebirds feeding on Rocky Mountain locusts in Nebraska, some of them consuming large numbers, as shown below.

9	killdeer stomachs contained an average of 28 locusts each.
11	semipalmated plover stomachs contained an average of 38 locusts each.
16	mountain plover stomachs contained an average of 45 locusts each.
11	jacksnipe stomachs contained an average of 37 locusts each.
22	upland plover stomachs contained an average of 36 locusts each.
10	long-billed curlew stomachs contained an average of 48 locusts each.

Even under ordinary conditions grasshoppers are a staple food of many members of the shorebird family, and the following species are known to feed on them:

Northern phalarope (Lobipes lobatus).

Avocet (Recurvirostra americana).

Black-necked stilt (Himantopus mexicanus).

Woodcock (Philohela minor).

Jacksnipe (Gallinago delicata).

Dowitcher (Macrorhamphus griseus).

Robin snipe (Tringa canutus).

White-rumped sandpiper (Pisobia fuscicollis).

Baird sandpiper (Pisobia bairdi).

Least sandpiper (Pisobia minutilla).

Buff-breasted sandpiper (Tryngites subruficollis).

Spotted sandpiper (Actitis macularia).

Long-billed curlew (Numenius americanus).

Black-bellied plover (Squatarola squatarola).

Golden plover (Charadrius dominicus).

Killdeer (Oxyechus vociferus).

Semipalmated plover (Aegialitis semipalmata).

Marbled godwit (Limosa fedoa).

[Page 231]

Ringed plover (Aegialitis hiaticula).

Yellowlegs (Totanus flavipes).

Mountain plover (Podasocys montanus).

Solitary sandpiper (Helodromas solitarius).

Turnstone (Arenaria interpres).

Upland plover (Bartramia longicauda).

Shorebirds are fond of other insect pests of forage and grain crops, including the army worm, which is known to be eaten by the killdeer and spotted sandpiper; also cutworms, among whose enemies are the avocet, woodcock, pectoral and Baird sandpipers, upland plover, and killdeer. Two caterpillar enemies of cotton, the cotton worm and the cotton cutworm, are eaten by the upland plover and killdeer. The latter bird feeds also on caterpillars of the genus Phlegethontius, which includes, the tobacco and tomato worms.

The principal farm crops have many destructive beetle enemies also, and some of these are eagerly eaten by shorebirds. The boll weevil and clover-leaf weevil are eaten by the upland plover and killdeer, the rice weevil by the killdeer, the cowpea weevil by the upland plover, and the clover-root curculio by the following species of shorebirds:

Northern phalarope (Lobipes lobatus).

White-rumped sandpiper (Pisobia fuscicollis).

Pectoral sandpiper (Pisobia maculata).

Upland plover (Bartramia longicauda).

Baird sandpiper (Pisobia bairdi).

Killdeer (Oxyechus vociferus).

The last two eat also other weevils which attack cotton, grapes and sugar beets. Bill-bugs, which often do considerable damage to corn, seem to be favorite food of some of the shorebirds. They are eaten by the Wilson phalarope, avocet, black-necked stilt, pectoral sandpiper, killdeer, and upland plover. They are an important element of the latter bird's diet, and no fewer than eight species of them have been found in its food.

Wireworms and their adult forms, click beetles, are devoured by the northern phalarope, woodcock, jacksnipe, pectoral sandpiper, killdeer, and upland plover. The last three feed also on the southern corn leaf-beetle and the last two upon the grapevine colaspis. Other shorebirds that eat leaf-beetles are the Wilson phalarope and dowitcher.

Crayfishes, which are a pest in rice and corn fields in the South and which injure levees, are favorite food of the black-necked stilt, and several other shorebirds feed upon them, notably the jacksnipe, robin snipe, spotted sandpiper, upland plover, and killdeer.

Thus it is evident that shorebirds render important aid by devouring the enemies of farm crops and in other ways, and their services are appreciated by those who have observed the birds in the field. Thus W.A. Clark, of Corpus Christi, Tex., reports that upland plovers are industrious in following the plow and in eating the grubs that destroy garden stuff, corn, and cotton crops. H.W. Tinkham, of Fall River, Mass., says of the spotted sandpiper: "Three pairs nested in a young orchard behind my house and adjacent to my garden. I did not see them once go to the shore for food (shore about 1,500 feet away), but I did see them many times make faithful search of my garden for cutworms, [Page 232] spotted squash bugs, and green flies. Cutworms and cabbage worms were their special prey. After the young could fly, they still kept at work in my garden, and showed no inclination to go to the shore until about August 15th. They and a flock of quails just over the wall helped me wonderfully."

In the uncultivated parts of their range also, shorebirds search out and destroy many creatures that are detrimental to man's interest. Several species prey upon the predaceous diving beetles (Dytiscidae), which are a nuisance in fish hatcheries and which destroy many insects, the natural food of fishes. The birds now known to take these beetles are:

Northern phalarope (Lobipes lobatus).

Dowitcher (Macrorhamphus griseus).

Wilson phalarope (Steganopus tricolor).

Robin snipe (Tringa canutus).

Avocet (Recurvirostra americana).

Pectoral sandpiper (Pisobia maculata).

Black-necked stilt (Himantopus mexicanus).

Red-backed sandpiper (Pelidna alpina sakhalina).

Jacksnipe (Gallinago delicata).

Kill deer (Oxyechus vociferus).

Large numbers of marine worms of the genus Nereis, which prey upon oysters, are eaten by shorebirds. These worms are common on both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and are eaten by shorebirds wherever they occur. It is not uncommon to find that from 100 to 250 of them have been eaten at one meal. The birds known to feed upon them are:

Northern phalarope (Lobipes lobatus).

White-rumped sandpiper (Pisobia fuscicollis).

Dowitcher (Macrorhamphus griseus).

Stilt sandpiper (Micropalama himantopus).

Red-backed sandpiper (Pelidna alpina sakhalina).

Robin snipe (Tringa canutus).

Purple sandpiper (Arquatella maritima).

Killdeer (Oxyechus vociferus).

The economic record of the shorebirds deserves nothing but praise. These birds injure no crop, but on the contrary feed upon many of the worst enemies of agriculture. It is worth recalling that their diet includes such pests as the Rocky Mountain locust and other injurious grasshoppers, the army worm, cutworms, cabbage worms, cotton worm, cotton cutworm, boll weevil, clover leaf weevil, clover root curculio, rice weevil, corn bill-bugs, wireworms, corn leaf-beetles, cucumber beetles, white grubs, and such foes of stock as the Texas fever tick, horseflies, and mosquitoes. Their warfare on crayfishes must not be overlooked, nor must we forget the more personal debt of gratitude we owe them for preying upon mosquitoes. They are the most important bird enemies of these pests known to us.

Shorebirds have been hunted until only a remnant of their once vast numbers is left. Their limited powers of reproduction, coupled with the natural vicissitudes of the breeding period, make their increase slow, and peculiarly expose them to danger of extermination.

In the way of protection a beginning has been made, and a continuous close season until 1915 has been established for the following birds: The killdeer, in Massachusetts and Louisiana; the upland plover, in Massachusetts, and Vermont; and the piping plover in Massachusetts. But, considering the needs and value of these birds, this modicum of protection is small indeed.

[Page 233]

The above-named species are not the only ones that should be exempt from persecution, for all the shorebirds of the United States are in great need of better protection. They should be protected, first, to save them from the danger of extermination, and, second, because of their economic importance. So great, indeed, is their economic value, that their retention on the game list and their destruction by sportsmen is a serious loss to agriculture.—(End of the circular.)

The following appeared in the Zoological Society Bulletin, for January, 1909, from Richard Walter Tomalin, of Sydney, N.S.W.:

"In the subdistricts of Robertson and Kangaloon in the Illawarra district of New South Wales, what ten years ago was a waving mass of English cocksfoot and rye grass, which had been put in gradually as the dense vine scrub was felled and burnt off, is now a barren desert, and nine families out of every ten which were renting properties have been compelled to leave the district and take up other lands. This is through the grubs having eaten out the grass by the roots. Ploughing proved to be useless, as the grubs ate out the grass just the same. Whilst there recently I was informed that it took three years from the time the grubs were first seen until to-day, to accomplish this complete devastation;. in other words, three years ago the grubs began work in the beautiful country of green mountains and running streams.

"The birds had all been ruthlessly shot and destroyed in that district, and I was amazed at the absence of bird life. The two sub-districts I have mentioned have an area of about thirty square miles, and form a table-land about 1200 feet above sea level."

The same kind of common sense that teaches men to go in when it rains, and keep out of fiery furnaces, teaches us that as a business proposition it is to man's interest to protect the birds. Make them plentiful and keep them so. When we strike the birds, we hurt ourselves. The protection of our insect-eating and seed-eating birds is a cash proposition,—protect or pay.

Were I a farmer, no gun ever should be fired on my premises at any bird save the English sparrow and the three bad hawks. Any man who would kill my friend Bob White I would treat as an enemy. The man who would shoot and eat any of the song-birds, woodpeckers, or shorebirds that worked for me, I would surely molest.

Every farmer should post every foot of his lands, cultivated and not cultivated. The farmer who does not do so is his own enemy; and he needs a guardian.

At this stage of wild life extermination, it is impossible to make our bird-protection laws too strict, or too far-reaching. The remnant of our birds should be protected, with clubs and guns if necessary. All our shore birds should be accorded a ten-year close season. Don't ask the gunners whether they will agree to it or not. Of course they will not agree to it,—never! But our duty is clear,—to go ahead and do it!

As a state and county asset, the white-tailed deer contains possibilities that as yet seem to be ignored by the American people as a whole. It is quite time to consider that persistent, prolific and toothsome animal.

The proposition that large herds of horned game can not becomingly roam at will over farms and vineyards worth one hundred dollars per acre, affords little room for argument. Generally speaking, there is but one country in the world that breaks this well-nigh universal rule; and that country is India. On the plains between and adjacent to the Ganges and the Jumna, for two thousand years herds of black-buck, or sasin antelope, have roamed over cultivated fields so thickly garnished with human beings that to-day the rifle-shooting sportsman stands in hourly peril of bagging a five-hundred-rupee native every time he fires at an antelope.

Wherever rich agricultural lands exist, the big game must give way,—from those lands. To-day the bison could not survive in Iowa, eastern Nebraska or eastern Kansas, any longer than a Shawnee Indian would last on the Bowery. It was foredoomed that the elk, deer, bear and wild turkey should vanish from the rich farming regions of the East and the middle West.

To-day in British East Africa lions are being hunted with dogs and shot wholesale, because they are a pest to the settlers and to the surviving herds of big game. At the same time, the settlers who are striving to wrest the fertile plains of B.E.A, from the domain of savagery declare that the African buffalo, the zebra, the kongoni and the elephant are public nuisances that must be suppressed by the rifle.

Even the most ardent friend of wild life must admit that when a settler has laboriously fenced his fields, and plowed and sowed, only to have his whole crop ruined in one night by a herd of fence-breaking zebras, the event is sufficient to abrade the nerves of the party most in interest. While I take no stock in stories of dozens of "rogue" elephants that require treatment with the rifle, and of grown men being imperiled by savage gazelles, we admit that there are times when wild animals can make nuisances of themselves. Let us consider that subject now.

Wild Animal Nuisances. —Complaints have come to me, at various times, of great destruction of lambs by eagles; of trout by blue herons; of crops (on Long Island) by deer; of pears destroyed by birds, and of valuable park trees by beavers that chop down trees not wisely but too well. I do not, however, include in this category any cherries eaten by robins, or orioles, or jays; for they are of too small importance to consider in this court.

A FOOD SUPPLY OF WHITE-TAILED DEER

The Killing of the Does was Wrong

To meet the legitimate demands for the abatement of unbearable wild-animal nuisances, I recommend the enactment of a law similar to Section 158 of the Game laws of New York, which provides for the safe and legitimate abatement of unbearable wild creatures as follows:

Section 158. Power to Take Birds and Quadrupeds. In the event that any species of birds protected by the provisions of section two hundred and nineteen of this article, or quadrupeds protected by law, shall at any time, in any locality, become destructive of private or public property, the commission shall have power in its discretion to direct any game protector, or issue a permit to any citizen of the state, to take such species of birds or quadrupeds and dispose of the same in such manner as the commission may provide. Such permit shall expire within four months after the date of issuance.

This measure should be adopted by every state that is troubled by too many, or too aggressive, wild mammals or birds.

But to return to the subject of big game and farming. We do not complain of the disappearance of the bison, elk, deer and bear from the farms of the United States and Canada. The passing of the big game from all such regions follows the advance of real civilization, just so surely and certainly as night follows day.

But this vast land of ours is not wholly composed of rich agricultural lands; not by any means. There are millions of acres of forest lands, good, bad and indifferent, worth from nothing per acre up to one hundred [Page 236] dollars or more. There are millions of acres of rocky, brush-covered mountains and hills, wholly unsuited to agriculture, or even horticulture. There are other millions of acres of arid plains and arboreal deserts, on which nothing but thirst-proof animals can live and thrive. The South contains vast pine forests and cypress swamps, millions of acres of them, of which the average northerner knows less than nothing.

We can not stop long enough to look it up, but from the green color on our national map that betokens the forest reserves, and from our own personal knowledge of the deserts, swamps, barrens and rocks that we have seen, we make the estimate that fully one-third of the total area of the United States is incapable of supporting the husbandman who depends for his existence upon tillage of the soil. People may talk and write about "dry farming" all they please, but I wish to observe that from Dry-Farming to Success is a long shot, with many limbs in the way. When it rains sufficiently, dry farming is a success; but otherwise it is not; and we heartily wish it were otherwise.

The logical conclusion of our land that is utterly unfit for agriculture is a great area of land available for occupancy by valuable wild animals. Every year the people of the United States are wasting uncountable millions of pounds of venison, because we are neglecting our opportunities for producing it practically without cost. Imagine for a moment bestowing upon land owners the ability to stock with white-tailed and Indian sambar deer all the wild lands of the United States that are suitable for those species, and permitting only bucks over one year of age to be shot. With the does even reasonably protected, the numerical results in annual pounds of good edible flesh fairly challenges the imagination.

About six years ago, Mr. C.C. Worthington's deer, in his fenced park, at Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pennsylvania, became so numerous and so burdensome that he opened his fences and permitted about one thousand head to go free.

We are losing each year a very large and valuable asset in the intangible form of a million hardy deer that we might have raised but did not! Our vast domains of wooded mountains, hills and valleys lie practically untenanted by big game, save in a few exceptional spots. We lose because we are lawless. We lose because we are too improvident to conserve large forms of wild life unless we are compelled to do so by the stern edict of the law! The law-breakers, the game-hogs, the conscienceless doe-and-fawn slayers are everywhere! Ten per cent of all the grown men now in the United States are to-day poachers, thieves and law-breakers, or else they are liable to become so to-morrow. If you doubt it, try risking your new umbrella unprotected in the next mixed company of one hundred men that you encounter, in such a situation that it will be easy to "get away" with it.

We could raise two million deer each year on our empty wild lands; but without fences it would take half a million real game-wardens, on duty [Page 237] from dawn until dark, to protect them from destructive slaughter. At present our land of liberty contains only 9,354 game wardens. [J] The states that contain the greatest areas of wild lands naturally lack in population and in tax funds, and not one such state can afford to put into the field even half enough salaried game wardens to really protect her game from surreptitious slaughter. The surplus of "personal liberty" in this liberty-cursed land is a curse to the big game. The average frontiersman never will admit the divine right of kings, but he does ardently believe in the divine right of settlers,—to reach out and take any of the products of Nature that they happen to fancy.

Wild Meat As A Food Supply. —We hear much these days about the high cost of living, but thus far we have made no move to mend the situation. With coal going straight up to ten dollars per ton, beef going up to fifteen dollars per hundred on the hoof and wheat and hay going-up—heaven alone knows where, it is time for all Americans who are not rich to arouse and take thought for the morrow. What are we going to do about it? The tariff on the coarser necessities of life is now booked to come down; but what about the fresh meat supply?

I desire to point out that between Bangor and San Diego and from Key West to Bellingham, our country contains millions of acres of wild, practically uninhabited forests, rough foot-hills, bad-lands and mountains that could produce two million deer each year, without deducting $50,000 a year from the wealth of the country. I grant that in the total number of deer that would be necessary to produce two million deer per annum, the farms situated on the edges of forests, and actually within the forests, would suffer somewhat from the depredations of those deer. As I will presently show by documentary records, every one of those individual damages that exceeds two dollars in value could be compensated in cash, and afterward leave on the credit side of the deer account an enormous annual balance.

Stop for a moment, you enterprising and restless men and women who travel all over the United States, and think of the illimitable miles of unbroken forest that you have looked upon from your Pullman windows in the East, in the South, in the West and in southern Canada. Recall the wooded mountains of the Appalachian system, the White Mountain region, the pine forests of the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf States, the forests of Tennessee, Arkansas and southern Missouri; of northern Minnesota, and every state of the Rocky Mountain region. Then, think of the silent and untouched forests of the Pacific Coast and tell me whether you think five million deer scattered through all those forests would make any visible impression upon them. That would be only about twenty-five times as many as are there now! I think the forests would not be over populated; and they would produce two million killable deer each year!

Last year, 11,000 deer were forced down out of their hiding places in [Page 238] the Rocky Mountains, and were killed in Montana. Even the natives had not dreamed there were so many available; and they were slaughtered not wisely but too ill. It is not right that six members of one family should "hog" twelve deer in one season. At present no deer supply can stand such slaughter.

Assuming that the people of the United States could be educated into the idea of so conserving deer that they could draw two million head per year from the general stock, what would it be worth?

It is not very difficult to estimate the value of a deer, when the whole animal can be utilized. In various portions of the United States, deer vary in size, but I shall take all this into account, and try to strike a fair average. In some sections, where deer are large and heavy, a full-grown buck is easily worth twenty-five dollars. Let him who doubts it, try to replace those generous pounds of flesh with purchased beef and mutton and veal, and see how far twenty-five dollars will go toward it. Every man who is a householder knows full well how little meat one dollar will buy at this time.

I think that throughout the United States as a whole every full-grown deer, male or female contains on an average ten dollars worth of good meat. I know of one large preserve which annually sells its surplus of deer at that price, wholesale, to dealers; and in New York City (doubtless in many other cities, also) venison often has sold in the market at one dollar per pound!

Two million deer at $10 each mean $20,000,000. The licenses for the killing of two million deer should cost one million men one dollar each; and that would pay 1,666 new game wardens each fifty dollars per month, all the year round. The damages that would need to be paid to farmers, on account of crops injured by deer, would be so small that each county could take care of its own cases, from its own treasury, as is done in the State of Vermont.

There are certain essentials to the realization of a dream of two million deer per year that are absolutely required. They are neither obscure nor impossible.

Each state and each county proposing to stock its vacant woods with deer must resolutely educate its own people in the necessity of playing fair about the killing of deer, and giving every man and every deer a square deal. This is not impossible! Not as a general thing, even though it may be so in some specially lawless communities. If the leading men of the state and the county will take this matter seriously in hand, it can be done in two years' time. The American people are not insensible to appeals to reason, when those appeals are made by their own "home folks." The governors, senators, assemblymen, judges, mayors and justices of the peace could, if they would, make a campaign of education and appeal that would result in the creation of an immense volume of free wild food in every state that possesses wild lands.

When the shoe of Necessity pinches the People hard enough, remember the possibilities in deer.

From the "American Natural History"

WHITE-TAILED DEER

If Honestly and Intelligently Conserved, this Species could be made to Produce on our Wild Lands Two Million Deer per annum, as a new Food Supply

The best wild animal to furnish a serious food supply is the white-tailed deer. This is because of its persistence and fertility. The elk is too large for general use. An elk carcass can not be carried on a horse; it is impossible to get a sled or a wagon to where it lies; and so, fully half of it usually is wasted! The mule deer is good for the Rocky Mountains, and can live where the white-tail can not; but it is too easy to shoot! The Columbian black-tail is the natural species for the forests of the Pacific states; but it is a trifle small in size.

The Example Of Vermont. —In order to show that all the above is not based on empty theory,—regarding the stocking of forests with deer, their wonderful powers of increase, and the practical handling of the damage question,—let us take the experience and the fine example of Vermont.

In April, 1875, a few sportsmen of Rutland, of whom the late Henry W. Cheney was one, procured in the Adirondacks thirteen white-tailed deer, six bucks and seven does. These were liberated in a forest six miles from Rutland, and beyond being protected from slaughter, they were left to shift for themselves. They increased, slowly at first, then rapidly, and by 1897, they had become so numerous that it seemed right to have a short annual open season, and kill a few. From first to last, many of those deer have been killed contrary to law. In 1904-5, it was known that 294 head were destroyed in that way; and undoubtedly there were others that were not reported.

Damages To Crops By Deer. —For several years past, the various counties [Page 241] of Vermont have been paying farmers for damages inflicted upon their crops by deer. Clearly, it is more just that counties should settle these damages than that they should be paid from the state treasury, because the counties paying damages have large compensation in the value of the deer killed each year. The hunting appears to be open to all persons who hold licenses from the state.

In order that the public at large may know the cost of the Vermont system, I offer the following digest compiled from the last biennial report of the State Fish and Game Commissioner:

Value Of White-Tailed Deer. —Having noted the fact that in two years (1908-9), the people of Vermont paid out $4,865 in compensation for damages inflicted by deer, it is of interest to determine whether that money was wisely expended. In other words, did it pay?

We have seen that in the years 1908 and 9, the people of Vermont killed, legally and illegally, and converted to use, 7,186 deer. This does not include the deer killed by dogs and by accidents.

Regarding the value of a full-grown deer, it must be remembered that much depends upon the locality of the carcass. In New York or Pittsburg or Chicago, a whole deer is worth, at wholesale, at least twenty-five dollars. In Vermont, where deer are plentiful, they are worth a less sum. I think that fifteen dollars would be a fair figure,—at least low enough!

Even when computed at fifteen dollars per carcass, those deer were worth to the people of Vermont $107,790. It would seem, therefore, that the soundness of Vermont's policy leaves no room for argument; and we hope that other states, and also private individuals, will profit by Vermont's very successful experiment in bringing back the deer to her forests, and in increasing the food supply of her people.

Killing Female Deer. —To say one word on this subject which might by any possibility be construed as favoring it, is like juggling with a lighted torch over a barrel of gunpowder. Already, in Pennsylvania at least one gentleman has appeared anxious to represent me as favoring the killing of does, which in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand I distinctly and emphatically do not. The slaughter of female hoofed game animals is necessarily destructive and reprehensible, and not one man out of every ten thousand in this country ever will see the place and time wherein the opposite is true.

At present there are just two places in America, and I think only two, wherein there exists the slightest exception on this point. The state of Vermont is becoming overstocked with deer, and the females have in some counties (not in all), become so tame and destructive in orchards, gardens and farm crops as to constitute a great annoyance. For this reason, the experiment is being made of permitting does to be killed under license, until their number is somewhat reduced.

The first returns from this trial have now come in, from the county game wardens of Vermont to the state game warden. Mr. John W. Titcomb. I will quote the gist of the opinion of each.

The State Commissioner says: "This law should remain in force at least until there is some indication of a decrease in the number of deer." Warden W.H. Taft (Addison County) says: "The killing of does I believe did away with a good many of these tame deer that cause most of the damage to farmers' crops." Harry Chase (Bennington County) says the doe-killing law is "a good law, and I sincerely trust it will not be repealed." Warden Hayward of Rutland County says: "The majority of the farmers in this county are in favor of repealing the doe law.... A great many does and young deer (almost fawns) were killed in this county during the hunting season of 1909." R.W. Wheeler, of Rutland County says: "Have the doe law repealed! We don't need it!" H.J. Parcher of Washington County finds that the does did more damage to the crops than the bucks, and he thinks the doe law is "a just one." R.L. Frost, of Windham County, judicially concludes that "the law allowing does to be killed should remain in force one or two seasons more." C.S Parker, of Orleans County, says his county is not overstocked with deer, and he favors a special act for his county, to protect females.

A summary of the testimony of the wardens is easily made. When deer are too plentiful, and the over-tame does become a public nuisance too great to be endured, the number should be reduced by regular shooting in the open season; but,

As soon as the proper balance of deer life has been restored, protect the does once more.

The pursuit of this policy is safe and sane, provided it can be wrought out without the influence of selfishness, and reckless disregard for the rights of the next generation. On the whole, its handling is like playing with fire, and I think there are very, very few states on this earth wherein it would be wise or safe to try it. As a wise friend once remarked to me, "Give some men a hinch, and they'll always try to take a hell." In Vermont, however, the situation is kept so well in hand we may be sure that at the right moment the law providing for the decrease of the number of does will be repealed.

Hippopotami And Antelopes. —Last year a bill was introduced in the lower House of Congress proposing to provide funds for the introduction into certain southern states of various animals from Africa, especially hippopotami and African antelopes. The former were proposed partly for [Page 243] the purpose of ridding navigation of the water hyacinths that now are choking many of the streams of Louisiana and Mississippi. The antelopes were to be acclimatized as a food supply for the people at large.

This measure well illustrates the prevailing disposition of the American people to-day,—to ignore and destroy their own valuable natural stock of wild birds and mammals, and when they have completed their war of extermination, reach out to foreign countries for foreign species. Instead of preserving the deer of the South, the South reaches out for the utterly impossible antelopes of Africa, and the preposterous hippopotamus. The North joyously exterminates her quail and ruffed grouse, and goes to Europe for the Hungarian partridge. That partridge is a failure here, and I am heartily glad of it, on the ground that the exterminators of our native species do not deserve success in their efforts to displace our finest native species with others from abroad.

The hippo-antelope proposition is a climax of absurdity, in proposing the replacing of valuable native game with impossible foreign species.

There is grave danger that through ignorance of the true character of about 80 per cent of the men and boys who shoot wild creatures, a great wrong will be done the latter. Let us not make a fatal mistake.

After more than thirty years of observation among all kinds of sportsmen, hunters and gunners, I am convinced that it is utterly futile and deadly dangerous to rely on humane, high-class sentiment to diminish the slaughter of wild things by game-hogs and pot-hunters.

In some respects, the term "game-hog" is a rude, rough word; but it is needed in the English language, and it has come to stay. It is a disagreeable term, but it was brought into use to apply to a class of very disagreeable persons.

A "game-hog" is a hunter of game who knows no such thing as sentiment or conscience in the killing of game, so long as he keeps within the limit of the law. Regardless of the scarcity of game, or of its hard struggle for existence, he will kill right up to the bag limit every day that he goes out, provided it is possible to do so. He uses the "law" as a salve for the spot where his conscience should be. He will shoot with any machine gun, or gun of big calibre, in every way that the law allows, and he knows no such thing as giving the game a square deal. He brags of his big bags of game, and he loves to be photographed with a wagon-load of dead birds as a background. He believes in automatic and pump guns, spring shooting, longer open seasons and "more game." He is quite content to shoot half tame ducks in a club preserve as they fly between coop and pond, whenever he secures an opportunity. He will gladly sell his game whenever he can do so without being found out, and sometimes when he is.