THE GREAT MASSACRE 103 



**No," answered the old woodsman, "I don't. 

 Them game-hogs should have left some thin' for the 

 folk to come after 'em. But Pigeons don't prove 

 nothin' 'bout Ducks. We don't worry Ducks when 

 they're nestin'." 



*' Because they don't nest in this country," came 

 the quick retort. *'And, as for the Passenger 

 Pigeon being only one case, there are a dozen 

 valuable birds that Man has made extinct in the 

 last century. The Great Auk, or Gare-Fowl, a 

 flightless bird as big as a goose, became extinct in 

 1844. Yet, in the eighteenth century, vessels trad- 

 ing to America did not trouble to carry fresh meat, 

 for they could stop on the islands off Newfound- 

 land and kill all the Great Auks they might need 

 for food, merely knocking them down with a stick, 

 they were so tame. 



" 'As extinct as the Dodo' is a proverb. The 

 Dodo, also a flightless bird, became extinct when 

 Europeans introduced pigs into the island of 

 Mauritius, which was the Dodo's only home. 

 Cats in Samoa almost, if not quite, have destroyed 

 the entire species of Tooth-billed Pigeons. 



''The Eskimo Curlew is another bird that mar- 

 ket-gunners have shot to extinction. In 1872, they 

 were still to be found in such numbers in New 



