THE GREAT MASSACRE 105 



a specimen in either of the Carolina s for sixty-five 

 years. It's about gone, too." 



*'Why, the Florida swamps was jest a-blazin' 

 with 'em!" declared Bull. 



''Yet in 1904 only thirteen birds could be found 

 in the state and, a few years later, they were 

 thought to have become extinct. In 1912, however, 

 Kennard secured definite evidence that there were 

 then at least seven birds left alive in the state. 

 The Carolina Paroquet was killed off by fruit- 

 growers, by plume-hunters, by that terrible 

 scourge — the ignorant negro with a three-dollar 

 gun — and by the so-called 'sportsmen' who shoot 

 any bird they can see, merely for the sake of shoot- 

 ing. 



' ' Some of the most beautiful of all our birds are 

 gone or are going. The clarion call of the great 

 Trumpeter Swan is forever silenced, and the Great 

 White Whooping Crane whoops but rarely now. 

 A frenetic demand by women for the wedding 

 plumes of the Snowy Egret has hounded that ex- 

 quisite heron to the verge of extermination. 



' ' The small birds suffer equally. Do you know 

 that professional song-bird catchers have immi- 

 grated here from Italy? That they put up 'roc- 

 colos' or bird-traps made of netting to catch Mock- 



