218 



UPLAXD SHOOTING. 



closed, and the earth had gone to rest. How pretty the 

 sight! A sweeping line of graceful undulations, bur- 

 nished by the setting sun with colors of blue and gold, 

 whUe the purple and orange seemed to cast upon the 

 clear sky a rosier hue. To one who has never seen wild 

 pigeons in their flight, neither the tongue or pen of man 

 can show its beauties, for when they skim the height* of 

 the ancient trees, the air is alive with flitting colors, the 

 world is on the move, and the very sky is filled with 



gladness. And now they are 

 gone! Gone never to return; 

 they who were ubiquitous, 

 extending from the Atlantic 

 to the Pacific, from the ex- 

 treme North to the Gulf of 

 Mexico; whose familiar forms 

 were knowTi to civilization 

 in the East, the Indians of 

 the West, the slaves of the 

 South, and the inhabitants 

 of the Xorth; they are gone. 

 They did not meet their fate 

 ' '- ■ " because of disease, because 



necessity demanded it, but by reason of the power 

 Divinity decreed, that the fowls and beasts should be 

 subservient to the will of man. Having this power, and 

 seeing in these birds a commodity which rex'resented 

 dollars and cents, these birds, to their destroyers, were 

 only as meat, sought for and destioyed to bring to the 

 pockets of their pursuers and jjersecutors money — just 

 the same as cattle or swine. It wasn't done by sports- 

 men, for no man having the heart of a sportsman could 

 go into a roost of pigeons and strike down the innocent 

 fledgeling with a club, while its mouth was crying for 

 food, and its mother fluttered and circled around it, try- 



