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: