THE NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA 175 



them to market by the ton. Kecently, in an effort to save this fine bird 

 from extermination, a prize of one hundred dollars has been offered for 

 the first person reporting a pair of breeding passenger pigeons. 



A couple of decades before the passenger pigeon's extermination, 

 flocks of hundreds of Carolina paroquets used to swoop down on the 

 apple orchards of Kentucky and southern Indiana. Naturally the farm- 

 ers took their guns and wreaked vengeance on the birds, and to-day the 

 Carolina paroquet is all but extinct. And it has long been driven from 

 the region I have just mentioned. 



The economic factor was an important one in the extermination of 

 these birds, but the rapidity of their extermination was due to the fact 

 that they flocked together and were killed by the wholesale. 



Beasts of prey are more courageous than weaker animals and all of 

 the larger ones are gone from thickly settled communities. The rabbit 

 is notorious for its timidity and still abounds everywhere outside of 

 city limits. True, fecundity and small size play an important part in 

 the preservation of the rabbit, but suppose that possessing these char- 

 acteristics, the instinct of self-defense were stronger than the instinct 

 to flee? The inevitable result would be the destruction of the race. 



No mental trait has been of greater value to an animal species warred 

 upon by man than timidity. The trait next in order of value is cun- 

 ning. 



The fox has always been justly considered as a type of the cunning 

 animal, but the trait has not been equally developed in all kinds of 

 foxes. In eastern North America there are two very distinct races, the 

 gray fox and the red, cross and silver foxes being mere varieties of the 

 latter. It is highly probable that the American red fox is descended 

 from animals brought from England by gentlemen emigrating from 

 that country during the eighteenth century, although this fact has not 

 been clearly established. It is certain, at least, that it was either rare 

 or absent in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois during the days when these 

 states were frontier regions, and at that time the native gray species 

 was abundant. Now the gray fox is extinct except in the rougher and 

 more wooded districts, while his red relative is a pest in even the most 

 densely settled valleys. The two species are nearly equal in size, fe- 

 cundity, value of fur and destructiveness to poultry. They eat the same 

 food, they live in the same kind of places, with the exception that the 

 gray species seldom makes its den in the open fields, while the red often 

 does. The vital point of difference seems to be in their cunning. The 

 red fox, if not the sly renard of Europe, is certainly a close counterpart 

 in cunning, while its gray cousin is lacking in this respect. In these 

 two species, at least, the difference between survival and extermination 

 depends upon cunning. 



