The former range of this species embraced the whole southeastern and
central United States. From the Gulf it extended to Albany, N.Y.,
northern Ohio and Indiana, northern Iowa, Nebraska, central Colorado and
eastern Texas, from which it will be seen that once it was widely
distributed. It was shot because it was destructive to fruit and for its
plumage, and many were trapped alive, to be kept in captivity. I know
that one colony, near the mouth of the Sebastian River, east coast of
Florida, was exterminated in 1898 by a local hunter, and I regret to say
that it was done in the hope of selling the living birds to a New York
bird-dealer. By holding bags over the holes in which the birds were
nesting, the entire colony, of about 16 birds, was caught.

Everywhere else than in Florida, the Carolina parrakeet has long been
extinct. In 1904 a flock of 13 birds was seen near Lake Okechobee; but
in Florida many calamities can overtake a flock of birds in eight years.
The birds in captivity are not breeding, and so far as perpetuation by
them is concerned, they are only one remove from mounted museum
specimens. This parrakeet is the only member of its order that ranged
into the United States during our own times, and with its disappearance
the Order Psittaciformes totally disappears from our country.

* * * * *

CHAPTER III

THE NEXT CANDIDATES FOR OBLIVION


In the world of human beings, murder is the most serious of all crimes.