exterminated, is a zoological mystery; but extermination surely will
come some day, and I think it will be in the near future.

The coast of China has been raked and scraped for wild ducks to ship to
New York,--prior to the passage of the Bayne law! I have forgotten the
figures that once were given me, but they were an astonishing number of
thousands for the year.

The Division of Negroes and Poor Whites who kill song and other birds
indiscriminately will be found in a separate chapter.

THE DIVISION OF "RESIDENT" GAME-BUTCHERS.--This refers to the men who
live in the haunts of big game, where wardens are the most of the time
totally absent, and where bucks, does and fawns of hoofed big game may
be killed in season and out of season, with impunity. It includes
guides, ranchmen, sheep-herders, cowboys, miners, lumbermen and floaters
generally. In times past, certain taxidermists of Montana promoted the
slaughter of wild bison in the Yellowstone Park, and it was a pair of
rascally taxidermists who killed, or caused to be killed in Lost Park,
in 1897, the very last bison of Colorado.

It seems to be natural for the minds of men who live in America in the
haunts of big game to drift into the idea that the wild game around them
is all theirs. Very few of them recognize the fact that every other man,
woman and child in a given state or province has vested rights in its
wild game. It is natural for a frontiersman to feel that because he is
in the wilds he has a God-given right to live off the country; but
to-day _that idea is totally wrong_! If some way can not be found to
curb that all-pervading propensity among our frontiersmen, then we may
as well bid all our open-field big game a long farewell; for the deadly