ALL 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.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II

EXTINCT SPECIES OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS

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