world rival of the numerous large and showy cranes of the old world;
for the sandhill crane is not in the same class as the white, black and
blue giants of Asia. We will part from our stately _Grus americanus_
with profound sorrow, for on this continent we ne'er shall see his like
again.

The well-nigh total disappearance of this species has been brought close
home to us by the fact that there are less than half a dozen individuals
alive in captivity, while in a wild state the bird is so rare as to be
quite unobtainable. For example, for nearly five years an English
gentlemen has been offering $1,000 for a pair, and the most
enterprising bird collector in America has been quite unable to fill the
order. So far as our information extends, the last living specimen
captured was taken six or seven years ago. The last wild birds seen and
reported were observed by Ernest Thompson Seton, who saw five below Fort
McMurray, Saskatchewan, October 16th, 1907, and by John F. Ferry, who
saw one at Big Quill Lake, Saskatchewan, in June, 1909.

The range of this species once covered the eastern two-thirds of the
continent of North America. It extended from the Atlantic coast to the
Rocky Mountains, and from Great Bear Lake to Florida and Texas. Eastward
of the Mississippi it has for twenty years been totally extinct, and the
last specimens taken alive were found in Kansas and Nebraska.

[Illustration: WHOOPING CRANES IN THE ZOOLOGICAL PARK
Very Soon this Species will Become Totally Extinct.]

THE TRUMPETER SWAN.--Six years ago this species was regarded as so
nearly extinct that a doubting ornithological club of Boston refused to
believe on hearsay evidence that the New York Zoological Park contained
a pair of living birds, and a committee was appointed, to investigate in
person, and report. Even at that time, skins were worth all the way from
$100 to $150 each; and when swan skins sell at either of those figures
it is because there are people who believe that the species either is on
the verge of extinction, or has passed it. The pair referred to above
was acquired in 1900. Since that time, Dr. Leonard C. Sanford procured
in 1910 two living birds from a bird dealer who obtained them on the
coast of Virginia. We have done our utmost to induce our pair to breed,
but without any further results than nest-building.

The loss of the trumpeter swan (_Olor americanus_) will not be so great,
nor felt so keenly, as the blotting out of the