314 THE STORY OF A BIRD LOVER 



goose did not offer an exception to this gener- 

 alization. 



Shortly before my visit to Jamaica these animals 

 had increased to such prodigious numbers and 

 their devastations had become so great that a 

 Royal Commission was appointed to look into the 

 matter. It will be sufficient for the purpose I 

 have in view to say that the mongoose practically 

 effected the purpose for which it was brought, 

 namely, the destruction of the sugar-cane rat. 

 But I have stated enough of the habits of this 

 animal to make plain that with its increase in 

 abundance other food supplies were necessary to 

 furnish subsistence for the growing number. The 

 eggs of ground-breeding birds, of lizards, snakes, 

 as well as the young of all these animals, were 

 preyed upon with some of the following results : 

 ground-building birds, such as the quail and the 

 guinea-fowl, exotic species, which had become 

 feral in the island, as well as small insectivorous 

 birds, many of the native ground-building doves 

 and the like, were shortly either wholly extermi- 

 nated or were much reduced. At the time of my 

 visit to the island the quail had become extinct, 

 the guinea-fowl was practically exterminated, all 

 the snakes of the island had been annihilated, and 

 as none of these were poisonous, so large an ele- 

 ment of animal life taken from the whole began 

 to show wi^' r;1y ramifying effects. Many species 



