THE PINNATED GROUSE, SAGE GROUSE AND PRAIRIE SHARP-TAIL.—­In view of the fate of the grouse of the United States, as it has been wrought out thus far in all the more thickly settled areas, and particularly in view of the history of the heath hen, we have no choice but to regard all three of the species named above as absolutely certain to become totally extinct, within a short period of years, unless the conditions surrounding them are immediately and radically changed for the better.  Personally, I do not believe that the gunners and game-hogs of Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California will permit any one of those species to be saved.

If the present open seasons prevail in the states that I have mentioned above, no power on earth can save those three species of grouse from the fate of the heath hen.  To-day their representatives exist only in small shreds and patches, and from fully nineteen-twentieths of their original ranges they are forever gone.

The sage grouse will be the first species to go.  It is the largest, the most conspicuous, the one most easily found, and the biggest mark for the gunner.  Those who have seen this bird in its native sage-brush well understand how fatally it is exposed to slaughter.

Many appeals have been made in behalf of the pinnated grouse; but the open seasons continue.  The gunners of the states in which a few remnants still exist are determined to have them, all; and the state legislatures seem disposed to allow the killers to have their way.  It may be however, that like New York with the heath hen, they will arouse and virtuously lock the stable door—­after the horse has been stolen!

[Illustration:  SAGE GROUSE The First of the Upland Game Birds that will Become Extinct]

THE SNOWY EGRET AND AMERICAN EGRET, (Egretta candidissima and Herodias egretta).—­These unfortunate birds, cursed for all time by the commercially valuable “aigrette” plumes that they bear, have had a very narrow escape from total extinction in the United States, despite all the efforts made to save them.  The “plume-hunters” of the millinery trade have been, and still are, determined to have the last feather and the last drop of egret blood.  In an effort to stop the slaughter in at least one locality in Florida, Warden Guy Bradley was killed by a plume-hunter, who of course escaped all punishment through the heaven-born “sympathy” of a local jury.

Of the bloody egret slaughter in Florida, not one-tenth of the whole story ever has been told.  Millions of adult birds,—­all there were,—­were killed in the breeding season, when the plumes were ripe for the market; and millions of young birds starved in their nests.  It was a common thing for a rookery of several hundred birds to be attacked by the plume-hunters, and in two or three days utterly destroyed.  The same bloody work is going on to-day in Venezuela and Brazil; and the stories and “affidavits” stating that the millions of egret plumes being shipped annually from those countries are “shed feathers,” “picked up off the ground,” are absolute lies.  The men who have sworn to those lies are perjurers, and should be punished for their crimes. (See Chapter XIII).