Trumpeter swan Edward Preble wrote of the decline in the hunt with the number sold annually dropping from 1,312 in 1854 to 122 in 1877. Sir John Richardson wrote in 1831 that the trumpeter "is the most common Swan in the interior of the fur-counties... It is to the trumpeter that the bulk of the Swan-skins imported by the Hudson's Bay Company belong." By the early twentieth century breeding trumpeter swans were nearly extirpated in the United States except for a remnant population of fewer than 70 wild trumpeters in remote hot springs in or near Yellowstone National Park. Surprising news came
What a piece of work is a man What a piece of work is a man "What a piece of work is man!" is a phrase within a soliloquy by Prince Hamlet in William Shakespeare's play of the same name. Hamlet is reflecting, at first admiringly, and then despairingly, on the human condition. The soliloquy, spoken in the play by Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, Scene 2, follows in its entirety. Rather than appearing in blank verse, the typical mode of composition of Shakespeare's plays, the speech appears in straight prose: Hamlet is saying that although humans may appear to think and act "nobly"