nare. 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
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.

W.T.H.

UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, NEW YORK,
December 1, 1912.

* * * * *

CONTENTS

PART I.--EXTERMINATION

Chapter
I. FORMER ABUNDANCE OF WILD LIFE
II. EXTINCT SPECIES OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS
III. THE NEXT CANDIDATES FOR OBLIVION
IV. EXTINCT AND NEARLY EXTINCT SPECIES OF MAMMALS
V. THE EXTERMINATION OF SPECIES, STATE BY STATE
VI. THE REGULAR ARMY OF DESTRUCTION
VII.