8o State Horticultural Society. 



St. Louis had beautiful sights while riding through the Mississippi bot- 

 toms. Hundreds of snow white Herons populated the lakes, wading in 

 the shallow water or standing and sitting along their shores. There are 

 no such sights to be had any more ; dreary and deserted appear the lakes, 

 only once in a while a solitary Blue Heron may be sighted yet, and his 

 days too are counted. 



Every now and then the newspapers bring the glorious news that 

 Mr. So-and-So killed an eagle. We have only two kinds of eagles, the 

 Golden Eagle and the Bald Eagle. The former was greatly in demand by 

 the American Indians for its tailfeathers, and was always a rare bird ; 

 the Bald Eagle, our emblem of liberty, is such an innocent chap, living 

 mostly on fish and offal which he picks up from streams and their -shores, 

 that we see no reason why its destruction should be regarded as a boon 

 to mankind, and its killing as a deed of heroism. 



As a symbol of unrestrained wing power this king of all birddom 

 inspires us with admiration by its large size and majestic flight, but, if 

 its numbers continue to dwindle as they are doing now, the mounted 

 specimens will soon outnumber the living birds and the next generation 

 will place the American Eagle where we have now the California Vulture, 

 on the list of animals on the point of extinction. Only a generation ago 

 the California Vulture, a bird with a spread of wing of ten feet, ranged 

 from the Columbia river to the Colorado river ; now a very few indi- 

 viduals are left in the mountains of southern California. But the story 

 of the California Vulture is only a repetition of that of the Great Auk, or 

 the Pallas Cormorant and the Labrador Duck, not one individual of 

 which species is in existence now, and all that is left of them are a few 

 skins and bones in the museums and private collections. 



There are very few hunters, even of the educated and conservative 

 class, who can resist the temptation to shoot at a large bird that happens 

 to come into the range of their firearms, and in spite of all progress of 

 culture and so-called civilization, the number of Nimrods is still on 

 the increase. Neither is such an increase hard to explain. In the first 

 place, it is the in-born love of nature coupled with the desire to make 

 up for the expense of time and money by obtaining something of tan- 

 gible, pecuniary value. Then, it is the result of false teaching on the 

 part of the press, assisted by railroad companies who do their share by 

 reducing rates to hunters and inducing their patrons to make frequent 

 trips to favorite hunting grounds. 



The newspapers and railroad companies are right in telling their 

 patrons that frequent trips into the country are conducive to the good 

 health of penned-up city people, but I do not see what the gun has to 



