Our Vanishing Wild Life eBook

William Temple Hornaday
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 632 pages of information about Our Vanishing Wild Life.

Our Vanishing Wild Life eBook

William Temple Hornaday
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 632 pages of information about Our Vanishing Wild Life.

A failure to appreciate either the beauty or the value of our living birds, quadrupeds and fishes is the hall-mark of arrested mental development and ignorance.  The victim is not always to blame; but in this practical world the cornerstone of legal jurisprudence is the inexorable principle that “ignorance of the law excuses no man.”

These pages are addressed to my countrymen, and the world at large, not as a reproach upon the dead Past which is gone beyond recall, but in the faint hope of somewhere and somehow arousing forces that will reform the Present and save the Future.  The extermination of wild species that now is proceeding throughout the world, is a dreadful thing.  It is not only injurious to the economy of the world, but it is a shame and a disgrace to the civilized portion of the human race.

It is of little avail that I should here enter into a detailed description of each species that now is being railroaded into oblivion.  The bookshelves of intelligent men and women are filled with beautiful and adequate books on birds and quadrupeds, wherein the status of each species may be determined, almost without effort.  There is time and space only in which to notice the most prominent of the doomed species, and perhaps discuss a few examples by way of illustration.  Here is a

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PARTIAL LIST OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS THREATENED WITH EARLY EXTERMINATION

WHOOPING CRANE
TRUMPETER SWAN
AMERICAN FLAMINGO
ROSEATE SPOONBILL
SCARLET IBIS
LONG-BILLED CURLEW
HUDSONIAN GODWIT
UPLAND PLOVER
RED-BREASTED SANDPIPER
GOLDEN PLOVER
DOWITCHER
WILLET
PECTORAL SANDPIPER
BLACK-CAPPED PETREL
AMERICAN EGRET
SNOWY EGRET
WOOD DUCK
BAND-TAILED PIGEON
HEATH HEN
SAGE GROUSE
PRAIRIE SHARP-TAIL
PINNATED GROUSE
WHITE-TAILED KITE

* * * * *

THE WHOOPING CRANE.—­This splendid bird will almost certainly be the next North American species to be totally exterminated.  It is the only new world rival of the numerous large and showy cranes of the old world; for the sandhill crane is not in the same class as the white, black and blue giants of Asia.  We will part from our stately Grus americanus with profound sorrow, for on this continent we ne’er shall see his like again.

The well-nigh total disappearance of this species has been brought close home to us by the fact that there are less than half a dozen individuals alive in captivity, while in a wild state the bird is so rare as to be quite unobtainable.  For example, for nearly five years an English gentlemen has been offering $1,000 for a pair, and the most enterprising bird collector in America has been quite unable to fill the order.  So far as our information extends, the last living specimen captured was taken six or seven years ago.  The last wild birds seen and reported were observed by Ernest Thompson Seton, who saw five below Fort McMurray, Saskatchewan, October 16th, 1907, and by John F. Ferry, who saw one at Big Quill Lake, Saskatchewan, in June, 1909.

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Our Vanishing Wild Life from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.