Birds Have Done With Me 



I, myself, witnessed the exodus of the Passen- 

 ger Pigeon ; saw the flocks grow less and less, and 

 finally vanish. The repulsive story of that great 

 massacre is too well known to need repetition, 

 and it is only worth while from its possible power 

 to point a moral and adorn a tale. People said 

 then, are saying now, you can't kill a species, they 

 were not killed, they died of disease. The grace- 

 ful Pigeon and the lordly Bison, strangely enough, 

 were both afflicted with the same disease human- 

 itis, caused by the sting of a tiny microbe, the 

 very deadliest on the earth. Within the historic 

 period no race of creatures has become extinct 

 without the aid of man, microbe, or "Lord High 

 Executioner," call him what you will. 



Massacre is defined as indiscriminate slaughter, 

 but not so of necessity as it may be very discrimi- 

 nating, so things killed in great numbers by star- 

 vation or the sly, prowling decimation of secret 

 enemies, are scarcely slaughtered with violence. 

 I wish to define my poetic sentence, at the head 

 of this chapter as extensive, unnecessary killing 

 with or without discrimination or violence. The 

 destruction of a bird's natural environment with 

 nothing to take its place, may look toward the 

 final destruction of that species as certainly as 

 work done with gun or club. The wholesale de- 

 struction of great forests and the draining and 

 cultivation of great areas of low land has meant 



