CAUSES. 587 



and the bars in the river were covered with gunners, 

 they hurried southward to seek peace and rest; and 

 still another, that, through the despoiling of their eggs 

 in their nesting-grounds, and the spring and fall killing 

 of the fowl by the myriads of hunters, their ranks had 

 become so depleted they could no longer make the big 

 display of former years. I do not know, I am sure. 



"Pretty much the same may be said with reference 

 to ducks. Indeed, the falling off in their case has been 

 greater than that of the geese. I have not heard of a 

 creditable bag, even by the most successful hunters. If 

 they have come this way in any considerable numbers, 

 they have done it so slyly and quietly that none of us 

 has been aware of their presence. We people of this 

 part of Nebraska have begun to realize that, like our 

 more eastern friends, if we want to do much success- 

 ful work among the ducks, we will have to seek other 

 regions for the sport. How quickly do the settlement 

 of a country, and the modern gun, cause the game to 

 disappear !" 



The writer of these paragraphs had evidently forgot- 

 ten in 1885 that one year earlier he had himself given 

 ample reasons for the disappearance of the geese, and, 

 in fact, had predicted that disappearance. Indeed, it 

 was only ten years before the date of his earlier letter 

 that the buffalo along the Platte had been destroyed in 

 precisely the same manner that the geese were. Half 

 a dozen years earlier than 1874, people had talked con- 

 stantly of the millions of buffalo, of the impossibility 

 of ever exterminating them, and of how they would 



