R. W. SHUFELDT. 



other animals, for they held their own everywhere, and increased 

 to mumbers almost unthinkable for the human mind. 



Then came the marvelous increase of oui" own species, 

 spreading all over the Earth, from one or several centers as the 

 case may have been. To some extent, this checked an undue 

 bird-expansion in many quarters; for, as far back as we can 

 trace human history, men have always preyed upon birds, kil- 

 ling thousands of them for food, for finery, and for other pur- 

 poses. 



Many centuries after this, records of birds-histories began 

 to be preserved in one way or another among the more advanced 

 groups of mankind, which records were made more perma- 

 nent as the art of printing evolved. Men, in those ages, never 

 thought for an instant that there could ever such a thing happen 

 as the exlermination of all the wild birds on the globe; so they 

 kept killing them as before, and thoughtlessly believed — if 

 any thought were given to the matter at all — that the supply 

 was inexhaustible, and the stock could easily maintain itself 

 through propagation — no matter how many were destroyed. 



Thus things stood pretty much at the close of the eighteenth 

 and beginning of the nineteenth centuries in this country. Little 

 or nothing was known of the territories and vast expanse of 

 country west of the Mississippi Valley, while Canada and Mexico 

 will be referred to later. No one noted any decrease in the 

 birds of the United States and her territorial possessions during 

 colonial times, when wild turkeys were shot all over New Eng- 

 land, and were found in millions all over the rest of the coun- 

 try. One very early writer before me states that in Florida 

 these birds caused the Earth to tremble when they all gobbled 

 together in the forest at the dawn of day. No danger of Flo- 

 rida getting any such jar as that in these days! 



Audubon describes the "netting" of quails in the Western 

 and Southern States during his time (1832), when three or four 

 men on horseback would capture and kill these birds to the 



