236 On the trail of vanishing birds 



nesota, Wisconsin, and New Jersey. With spectacular success the 

 American egret has made the long flight back! 



By 1901, the year that the Audubon Society was founded, several 

 North American bird species had already become extinct, or were 

 well along the road to oblivion. In June, 1899, in the third number 

 of what was to be the Society's official organ, Bird-Lore, a letter 

 was published from the vigorous pen of Theodore Roosevelt, then 

 governor of New York State. Governor Roosevelt wrote: ''The 

 destruction of the Wild Pigeon and the Carolina Paroquet has 

 meant a loss as severe as if the Catskills or the Palisades were 

 taken away. When I hear of the destruction of a species I feel 

 just as if all the works of some great writer had perished; as if we 

 had lost all instead of only part of Polybius or Livy." 



Up to this time "conservation," in the sense that we employ 

 today, was an unknown word. Robert Cushman Murphy, in a 

 review of the first fifty years of Bird-Lore (now Audubon Maga- 

 zine), recalls the state of things at the turn of the century: 



It was an age of expansion, of thresholds and vast portents, 

 and yet in many respects a gentle, leisurely period, as we view it 

 nostalgically across the decades. No motor cars brought far 

 shooting grounds near for hordes of gunners, multiplying like 

 the rabbits of Australia. Drainage programs had scarcely begun 

 to dry up the West. Many or most midland watersheds still 

 bore an adequate forest cover. And even though millions of 

 birds had been heedlessly wiped out by the combined effects of 

 the cage, hat, and game-market trades, there were still spots of 

 primordial Eden in the long-settled East. The ivory-bill, pas- 

 senger pigeon, and paroquet at least survived, even though their 

 probable doom could be foreseen. Many a southern swamp was 

 yet green with virgin cypress, and there were countless stands 

 of long-leaf pine that neither lumberman nor turpentiner had 

 ravaged. 



But many tragic events were in store, and it was to be some time 

 before there was an awakening. The great auk of our North At- 

 lantic sea coasts had been destroyed as early as the 1830s, and be- 

 came extinct elsewhere in 1844. The Labrador duck was gone by 



