Excerpt from Lost and Vanishing Birds: Being a Record of Some Remarkable Extinct Species and a Plea for Some Threatened Forms One of the saddest features of civilisation is the disappearance of so many beautiful and curious creatures form this world of ours. From all parts of the earth the same story comes; and we now seem to be within measurable distance of a time when wrecks and remnants of once compact and indigenous assemblages of organisms will be all that remain to us, and such a thing as a complete fauna will be unknown. This is not only a crime, but the violation of a sacred trust which we hold for posterity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.