8 R. W. SHUFELDT. 



When a species — be ita bird or any other 

 animal — once becomes extinct, it is never 

 reproduced again. 



In my opinion, the entire Class Birds is now doomed to 

 utter extinction; and, in a century or so, the world will be 

 b i r d 1 e s s, and will, when that time has expired, be repre- 

 sented by only a few kinds which have survived through man's 

 having domesticated them. That this w'ould be their fate, I 

 predicted nearly a quarter of a century ago (S ci en ce. Vol. XVIII, 

 1891); and I see no reason for changing my opinion. All the 

 protection they receive will not save them from their increasing 

 natural enemies; from man and his numereus weapons and 

 devices for their destruction; from the plume collectors and 

 Italian destroyers; from poison, cats and traps; horn boys all 

 over the world with their airguns and destructive propensities; 

 from the elements, as many thousands are drowned every year 

 by being blown into the water; from the fact that they have no 

 safe places of refuge as have fishes and other vertrebrates ; from 

 striking against wires, lighthouses and other structures of the 

 kind; from the fact that they are, in contradistinction to mam- 

 mals, all oviparous, and all over the world their eggs are 

 destroyed every year by the million, thus defeating their repro- 

 duction. Moreover, the human population of the world is now 

 increasing with astounding rapidity ; so that when certain species 

 of birds become nearly extinct, nothing protects them now, nor 

 will anything protect in the future such species from destruction 

 at the hands of the museum and ornithological collectors. No 

 law will be of any avail, and when such is the case it will 

 come too late. 



A Labrador duck in nature to-day, wearing, as it does, a 

 skin worth over 1000 dollars, would stand no more chance for 

 its life, were it found by any one with the means of cap- 

 turing it, than would a man falling out of an air-ship when a 



