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,