THE EXTERMINATION OF AMEAICA'S BIRD FAUNA. 



In the winter of 1865 I once saw the various species of gulls 

 and terns so numerous in New York harbor, that over fifty 

 boats of the "feather-collectors" were out shooting them. One 

 man passed near the quarter of the gunboat I was on board 

 of, as I stood on deck, and I calculated he had at least two or 

 three hundred gulls in his boat. He was using a single-barreled 

 muzzle-loading gun, and was pulling ashore for more amu- 

 nition. 



In the winter it is truly pitiful to see the little flocks of 

 gulls off „The Battery" nowadays. Sometimes there really may 

 be as many as ten in a flock and four in another, — the two 

 being a little over half a mile apart! This is the history of 

 gulls and terns in New York harbor for less than half a century. 

 Mark you, in another half century, a gull flying over those 

 waters will be an extraordinary sight indeed, and worthy of note 

 in various ornithological publications! 



No, in my opinion, the Passenger pigeon and Labrador duck 

 in this country are utterly extinct, — quite as much so as the 

 Great Auk (see illustrations), and not a few more of our species 

 are now going in precisely the same way, such as the Carolina, 

 parroquet, the Ivory-billed woodpeckeer, the Sharp-tailed grouse, 

 and fourty other fine species of birds. 



When the Japanese ship hundreds of bales of birds- 

 skins for fashion purposes from the islands of the Pacific in 

 one season, gulls, terns and albatrosses will not last very 

 long. Not long ago, one invoice of humming-bird skins from 

 South America totaled 400,000 skins! In Italy, the bird fauna 

 has practically been exterminated, and this is rapidly coming 

 to pass in hundreds of other localities, in the far East, in South 

 America, in Europe, Asia, and even in Africa and Australia. 



In other words, all over the world birds are now being 

 exterminated with enormous and ever increasing rapidity. Within 

 the next few years, hundreds of species will become entirely 

 extinct. 



