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.

[Illustration: SIX RECENTLY EXTERMINATED NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS
Great Auk Labrador Duck
Eskimo Curlew Pallas Cormorant
Passenger Pigeon Carolina Parrakeet]

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,
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 ch