h hens increased for two years after the Massachusetts Fish
and Game Commission established a reservation for them, but in 1911
they had not increased. There are probably about two hundred birds
extant.

"I found a great many marsh hawks on the Island and the Commission
did not kill them, believing them to be beneficial. In watching
them, I concluded that they were catching the young heath hens. A
large number of these hawks have been shot and their stomachs sent
to Washington for examination, as I was too busy at the time to
examine them. So far as I know, no report of the examination has
been made, but Dr. Field himself examined a few of the stomachs and
found the remains of the heath hen in some.

"The warden now says that during the past two years, the heath hen
has not increased, but I can give you no definite evidence of this.
I am quite sure they are being killed by natives of the island and
that at least one collector supplies birds for museums. We are
trying to get evidence of this.

"I believe if the heath hen is to be increased in numbers and brought
back to this country, we shall have to have more than one warden on
the reservation and, eventually, we shall have to establish the bird
on the mainland also."

[Illustration: PINNATED GROUSE, OR "PRAIRIE CHICKEN"
From the "American Natural History"]

THE PINNATED GROUSE, SAGE GROUSE AND PRAIRIE SHARP-TAIL.--In view of the
fate of the grouse of the United States, as it has been wrought out thus
far in all the more thickly settled areas, and particularly in view of
the history of the heath hen, we have no choice but to regard all three
of the species named above as absolutely certain to become totally
extinct, within a short period of years, unless the conditions
surrounding them are immediately and radically changed for the better.
Personally, I do not believe that the gunners and game-hogs of
Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California
will permit any one of those species to be saved.

If the present open seasons prevail in the states that I have mentioned
above, no power on earth can save those three species of grouse from the
fate of the heath hen. To-day their representatives exist only in small
shreds and patches, and from fully nineteen-twentieths of their original
ranges they are forever gone.

The sage grouse will be the first species to go. It is the largest, the
most conspicuous