Page 41 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

CANDIDATES FOR OBLIVION
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WHOOPING CRANES IN THE ZOOLOGICAL PARK Very Soon this Species will Become Totally Extinct.
tlemen 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 Mc- Murray, 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 continentofNorthAmerica. ItextendedfromtheAtlanticcoasttothe 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.
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 con- tained a pair of living birds, and a committee was appointed, to investi- gateinperson,andreport. Evenatthattime,skinswereworthallthe 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