THE PASSING OF THE PRAIRIE CHICKEN 115 



bered barrels of dead birds spoiled. That was before the days 

 of cold storage. 



The efforts that were made to stop that miserable busi- 

 ness were feeble to the point of imbecility; and absolutely 

 nothing permanent was accomplished. Had farmers generally 

 stopped all shooting on their farms, as every farmer should, 

 the war on those birds would have stopped alsa; but the barn 

 was not locked until after the horse had been stolen. A 

 species destroyed is rarely regained. 



To-day the Prairie Chicken is to be numbered with the 

 buffalo and passenger pigeon. It is so nearly extinct that only 

 a few flocks remain, the most of which are in northwestern 

 Minnesota, the Dakotas and Nebraska. If hunting them 

 with dogs continues, five years hence the species will probably 

 be quite extinct. 



It is useless to describe this bird. The chances are that 

 no reader of this book ever will see one outside of a museum, 

 or a large zoological garden.^ The great flocks of from one to 

 three hundred that from 1860 to 1875 were seen in winter in 

 the Iowa corn-fields, are gone forever. Even as late as 1874 

 many birds were killed every winter by flying against the 

 telegraph wires along the railways. 



The Heath Hen, or Eastern Pkairie Chicken,^ was 

 the first bird species of the United States to be completely 

 exterminated everywhere save in one small locality. I doubt 

 if there are more than one thousand Americans now living to 

 whom this bird is anything more than an empty name. 



^ During the first four years of its existence, the New York Zoological Park was 

 able to secure only four living specimens. 

 2 Tym-pa-nu'chus cu'pi-do. 



