250 On the trail of vanishing birds 



have awakened in time, and the most important of these reasons 

 are concerned with our growing stature as maturing, civilized 

 human beings. 



As for the bald fact of extinction, its stark reality and possible 

 meaning to us was described in striking terms in an editorial that 

 appeared in the Vineyard Gazette with the announcement of the 

 death of the last heath hen. The date was April 21, 1933, and 

 the writer was the paper's editor, Henry Beetle Hough. Here it 

 is in part: 



Now we know there are degrees even in death. All around 

 us nature is full of casualties, but they do not interrupt the 

 stream of life. When most living things die, they seem only to 

 revert to the central theme of existence from which they were 

 temporarily detached. There is a spirit of vitality everywhere 

 which enfolds the dead with a countenance of consolation, and 

 bestows upon the living races more than has been taken away. 

 But to the heath hen something more than death has hap- 

 pened, or, rather, a different kind of death. There is no survivor, 

 there is no future, there is no life to be created in this form 

 again. We are looking upon the uttermost finality which can be 

 written, glimpsing the darkness which will not know another 

 ray of light. We are in touch with the reality of extinction. 



In recent years an impression has gone forth that man has 

 learned to withhold his hand and let things about him grow and 

 multiply. The gospel of conservation, it is said, has won the 

 day. We know this is not true. May the death of the heath hen 

 serve to bring us nearer a time of realization and fulfillment! 

 Until now, saving only the imperious grace of economic im- 

 portance and sometimes not even that, a creature that man 

 could kill has had to die. 



Is nothing to follow the extinction of this bird except one 

 more lesson in conservation for school books, and a sentimental 

 mourning? On the Vineyard, certainly, there is more. What an 

 awe and fascination have been written into the theses of scien- 

 tific men who came to observe the heath hen on the great plain! 

 What accents of mystery, beauty and the eternal rites of life 



