d as described.

The man was a notorious character, and cruel in the extreme. Finally a
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!

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII

UNSEEN FOES OF WILD LIFE

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