Show LOSf BIDS AND BEASTS C An interesting communication in the columns of a contemporary afew days ago relates to the birds ot Utah which are I shown to be far more numerous and of greater variety than might be thought of 0 mountainous aud arid region But the feathered population of any section is not always the same in kind Doubtless the writer who appears to have been so observant wrier I servant of the habits of birds i he has been long a resident of theterritory has noticed many changes in the constitution of this population as well as in their numbers num-bers Thero are few men of fifty years or more that came hither from the middle states who cannot recall the pigeonflights in the days of their youth when in the fall of the year one vast field of pigeons after another I would in succession pass overhead towards the south nearly tho whole day long for 0 week Thero were localities in the forests of Missouri Indiana and Kentucky that had been pigeon roosts as far back as could be remembered and in thoscKtho flocks settled down at sunset in such masses that often the locality would resound with tho crash of falling limbs and tho tumult of fluttering flutter-ing birds Civilization has caused the pigeons to disappear Their breeding grounds and roosting places have been turned into farms they have been deprived of the food they onco subsisted on and a field of pig cons several acres in extent such cs could be seen a hundred times a day forty years ago Is never seen at all The cranes and wild geese were the highflyers of the pigeon pig-eon days The smaller birds were permitted per-mitted to monopolize the level just above the tall tree tops while the more aspiring waders and swimmers winged their flight from the cold waters of the north to the silent lakes lagoons and rivers of southern climes But the cranes and wild geese have disappeared too or almost so and tho sky is now rarely triangulated with the Vshaped flocks whose return in the early spring was I sign that the backbone of winter was broken When we feel like lamenting the loss of these birds we are reminded of the disappearance disap-pearance of another and nobler game which could not live side by side with civilization ization tho buffalo of the plains Less I than twenty years ago these animals were so numerous that the railroad trains were forced at times to halt while the herds crossed the tracks They still claimed the plains ns their domain by right of preemption pre-emption and settlement and when the multitudes began to drift towards the south in tho fall or the north in the spring even tho fierce locomotives had to give them tho rightofway and wait till the last animal had passed I was no uncommon uncom-mon sight to see from the windows of a passenger car the plain on one side covered to the horizon with buffalo quietly grazing undisturbed by the rush of the train or the shriek of the engine But the buffaloes hare vanished like an illusion The whiteman wanted the plains for his cattle and himself and tho buffalo had to movo off in the tracks ot the Indians In-dians who preceded them and who savage though they be were lesa unkind than tne pale faces who slaughtered them by the thousands for their hides J few very few shriveled bunches are still to be found in some of the mountain valleys along the northern boundary but they also are van ishing and in a few years the halftamo animals protected by the government in Yellowstone Park will be all that is left of the countless thousands that once occupied the great region between the Mississippi river and tho Rocky mountains |