Our narrator is hired by the New York Zoological Society to assist a professor who is in charge of their gardens and exhibits. He embarks on his search for a Great Auk, a species that was extinct for fifty or so years.
Where the slanting forest eaves, Shingled tight with greenest leaves, Sweep the scented meadow-sedge, Let us snoop along the edge; Let us pry in hidden nooks, Laden with our nature books, Scaring birds with happy cries, Chloroforming butterflies, Rooting up each woodland plant, Pinning beetle, fly, and ant, So we may identify What we've ruined, by-and-by.