Project Gutenberg's Our Vanishing Wild Life, by William T. Hornaday

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Our Vanishing Wild Life
Its Extermination and Preservation

Author: William T. Hornaday

Release Date: August 22, 2004 [EBook #13249]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE ***

Produced by Paul Murray and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

"_I know no way of judging of the Future but by the Past_."
--_Patrick Henry_.

REPORT

of a select committee of the Senate of Ohio, in 1857, on a bill proposed
to protect the passenger pigeon.

* * * * *

"The passenger pigeon needs no protection. Wonderfully prolific, having
the vast forests of the North as its breeding grounds, traveling
hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here to-day and elsewhere
to-morrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them, or be missed
from the myriads that are yearly produced."

"The snipe (_Scolopax wilsonii_) needs no protection.... The snipe, too,
like the pigeon, will take care of itself, and its yearly numbers can
not be materially lessened by the gun."

[Illustration: THE LAST LIVING PASSENGER PIGEON
Now in the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens. Twenty years old in 1912.
Copyright 1911, by Enno Meyer.]

* * * * *

THE FOLLY OF 1857 AND THE LESSON OF 1912

* * * * *

OUR VANISHING
WILD LIFE

ITS
EXTERMINATION AND PRESERVATION

BY
WILLIAM T. HORNADAY, Sc.D.

DIRECTOR OF THE NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL PARK;
AUTHOR OF "THE AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY";
EX-PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN BISON SOCIETY

WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

"Hew to the line! Let the chips fall where they will."--_Old Exhortation_.

"Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice."--_Othello_.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1913

* * * * *

SPECIAL NOTICE

For the benefit of the cause that this book represents, the author
freely extends to all periodicals and lecturers the privilege of
reproducing any of t