SPECIES EXTINCT OR EXTIRPATED. 427 



wholesale; but when were the Curlews ever known to eat 

 corn? Poisoned corn probably would not affect them. 



There is no need to look for a probable cause for the 

 extermination of the Eskimo Curlew, — the cause is painfully 

 apparent. The bird was a great favorite with epicures; it 

 was exterminated by the market demand. 



Trumbull (1888) says that as a table dainty he considers 

 it superior to all other birds, and that the gunners got from 

 seventy -five cents to a dollar apiece for them.^ The price 

 had doubled within thirty years. 



The extermination of this bird was foreshadowed by Mr. 

 George H. Mackay (Auk, 1897, p. 214), when, for some years, 

 it had been coming into the eastern markets by the ton in 

 barrels from the Mississippi valley in spring. Mr. Mackay 

 tersely asked, "Are we not approaching the beginning of the 

 end.^" In 1891 he wrote that spring shipments of Golden 

 Plover, Eskimo Curlews and Upland Plover to Boston markets 

 began " about four years ago " (1887), and had increased to 

 date. Two firms received at one shipment eight barrels of 

 Curlews and twelve barrels of Curlews and Golden Plover, 

 with twenty -five dozen Curlews and sixty dozen Plover to the 

 barrel. With such shipments going out of the west to many 

 firms in the great markets, the remark made by Mr. Mackay, 

 that, " while we may not be able now to answer the question 

 are they fewer than formerly, we shall be ably fitted to do so 

 in a few years " (Auk, 1891, p. 24), was prophetic. The end is 

 here. The destruction of this bird was mainly due to unre- 

 stricted shooting, market hunting and shipment, particularly 

 during the spring migration in the United States. When the 

 Passenger Pigeon began to decrease rapidly in numbers, about 

 1880, the marketmen looked about for something to take its 

 place in the market in spring. They found a new supply in the 

 great quantities of Plover and Curlews in the Mississippi 

 valley at that season. Less than thirty years of this wholesale 

 slaughter in the west practically exterminated the Curlews. 

 They were shot largely for western markets at first; they 

 began to come into the eastern markets in numbers about 



1 Trumbull, Gurdon: Names and Portraits of Birds, 1888, p. 203. 



