The Western Grebe 



ermine; and lorn was the maiden who boasted not even a bonnet snatched 

 from the breast of a mother grebe. The hunters, to ease the pain of the 

 lorn maiden, stood waist-deep in water behind screens of tules, and potted 

 the divers as they rose, one by one; or else they clubbed together and 

 "shot up" a colony at a time when anxiety for young made the birds less 

 wary. In this manner literal tens of thousands of these innocent birds 

 were slaughtered within the space of a decade in northern California and 

 in Oregon ; and those which remain to this day are a mere centesimal of 

 the former hosts. 



Yet those men were kind to their own children; were, indeed, good 

 neighbors, in the narrower sense, — none readier to sit up with a sick 

 friend. And you could more easily have borrowed money from one of 

 them than from an average banker. What was the matter? Why, "sin" is 

 largely social; and "society" had not yet evolved. Theodore, the Reso- 

 lute, gave one twist to the evolutionary jack-screw when he decreed the 

 Federal bird reservations; Weeks slipped a timber under in the Federal 

 control of migratory birds; and McLean set the concrete base in the 

 prohibition of the plumage traffic. A tally was checked on the tablets of 

 fate. Birds are no longer shot for their plumage in or for America. 



Taken in Siskiyou County 



TWINS OR WORSE 



Photo by Finley and Bohtman 



AT LEAST THEIR GODFATHER WILL NOT UNDERTAKE TO SAY WHETHER OR NOT THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE OF THESE BABY 



WESTERN GREBES. 



2046 



