THE DISAPPEARANCE OF WILD LIFE. 



By H. P. Attwater, Houston, Texas. 



The first settlers in America found the land abounding with 

 wild life, including numerous important and valuable species 

 of game birds and animals, which were found in immense flocks 

 and herds in many localities. During the bird migration periods 

 and nesting seasons in those days, the whole country was filled 

 with a great, glad, grand chorus of nature's orchestra, in marked 

 contrast with the silence which prevails in the forests and groves 

 at the present day, and throughout the great cultivated farm, 

 field, orchard and garden areas of this country, now swarming 

 with insect pests, which destroy crops, pester livestock and 

 spread diseases among men and animals, thereby causing immense 

 losses to our agricultural, horticultural and livestock industries. 



One of the most important features connected with the con- 

 servation of our natural resources is the preservation of valuable 

 animal and plant life, and their protection against the cruelty, the 

 ignorance and the selfishness of their destroyers. Reports by 

 reliable investigators show that air and water are polluted, rivers 

 and bayous used as sewers and dumping grounds, forests swept 

 away, fish destroyed in the streams, that some of the most useful 

 species of our wild birds and animals have been exterminated, 

 and others of great economic value, in great danger of becoming 

 extinct. It is a most deplorable fact, agreed to by most natural- 

 ists in the United States, that at least 90 per cent of the wild life 

 of this country, has been destroyed in the past 30 years. This is 

 not being done by savages and ignorant persons, but _by intelli- 

 gent people who boast of their civilization and education. In 

 speaking of the senseless destruction of birds and animals Dr. 

 W. T. Hornaday, director of the New York Zoological Park, 

 and well known as a champion of wild life preservation, says : 



" There are probably millions of people who do not realize that civil- 

 ized man is the most persistently wicked and wasteful of all the predatory 

 animals. The lions, the tigers, the bears, the eagles and hawks, serpent? 

 and fish eating fishes, all live by destroying life; but they kill only 

 what they think they can consume. Prom the earliest historic times, 

 it has been the way of savage man, red, black, brown and yellow, to 

 kill as wild animals do — only what he can use or thinks he can * * * 

 It has remained for the wolf, the sheep-killing dog and civilized man to 



