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