THE EXTERMINATION OF AMERICA'S BIRD FAUNA. 



extent of "many hundreds in the course of a day." This prac- 

 tice — to say nothing of what traps and the gunners were doing 

 — was going on everywhere. Tliink of three men in New Jer- 

 sey netting 600 quails in one day, killing them as captured, 

 and sending the lot to market where they fetched a quarter of a 

 dollar a pair! Three men only! No issuance of a note of warning 

 of future extermination was then thought of, though these "sports- 

 men" were often considerate enough to allow one pair its free- 

 dom out of every bunch captured, in that "the breed might be 

 continued." 



Again, in Audubon's earlier days (1813), he saw flocks, 

 miles long, of the common wild Passenger pigeon, numbering 

 hundreds of millions. Millions upon millions of these birds were 

 slaughtered in this country every year; millions of th^m were 

 allowed to rot upon the ground, after having been shot or 

 knocl^ed down; yet Audubon wrote that , "Persons unacquainted 

 with these birds might naturally conclude that such dreadful 

 havoc would soon put an end to the species. But I have satis- 

 fied myself, by long observation, that nothing but the gradual 

 diminution of our forests can accomplish their decrease, as they 

 not infrequently quadruple their numbers yearly, and always at 

 least double it." In this prediction the "great bird-man" was 

 again mistaken; for those untold billions of passenger pigeons 

 are now all extinct, and we have still enormous stretches of 

 primeval forests left, but not a single pigeon in them. Already 

 1000 dollars has been offered for a single nest with eggs, and 

 a good skin will soon be worth as much. In 1872, in Con- 

 necticut, I saw flocks of these pigeons that obscured the sun 

 as they passed. During the day I shot thirty-six of them and 

 stopped; others shot hundreds, and the firing on the hills north 

 of Stamford was continuous for three days. Barrels upon barrels 

 of the birds were slaughtered. 



In 1864 I was in southern Florida and on the Bahama 

 Banks for over a year. I those times, the various kinds of 



