43° POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



animals, least of all when this incurs values incalculably greater than 

 those represented by the seals alone. 



All phases of this question which can be handled locally, and such 

 are the more urgent phases, should be so handled by the proper bureaus, 

 already in existence, backed by unmistakably knowing public sentiment. 

 Sequentially the system of international safeguarding should be ex- 

 tended and perfected — the same system that has been already invoked 

 for the seals, by reason of the fact that they yield that woman's garment 

 — the seal-skin cloak. Only when all the sea animals are considered 

 will this system ever be effective in the case of any single species; and 

 somewhat setting aside altruism, it does seem strange that the immense 

 values of the whales and turtles should have been so persistently over- 

 looked. On the other hand, a very great altruistic value is also in- 

 volved. For all international movements leading to the reasonable 

 use of naval equipment in patrolling all the seas for the sake of com- 

 mon and world-wide interests and sympathies — those causes at once 

 humane and wealth-conserving, must thrice bless. 



It is, then, we must emphatically insist, neither Utopian nor im- 

 practical to attempt and speedily carry out the measures required for 

 the preservation not only of land animals, but of all our great animals 

 of the sea. The only element of doubt is whether the volume of senti- 

 ment can soon enough make itself felt — in short, whether the race 

 has reached the required culture stage in time. Science has laid low 

 the fallacious theory of fabulous gold dissolved in the waters of the 

 seas, and we no longer heed this phantom of wealth which has deluded 

 credulous minds quite since the days of alchemy. Nevertheless, this 

 old belief may yet find a certain large measure of prophetic fulfillment 

 if man can overcome his habits of wanton destruction before our great 

 marine animals are extinct and the possibility of their preservation on 

 this planet gone forever. 



To be practical, every zoological text-book should have its chapter 

 on the conservation of the animals of the land and sea. None should 

 be forgotten, as many must inevitably be if the subject of conservation is 

 not taken up in its broadest phases and based on first principles in order 

 that specific applications may be both general and intelligent. And 

 such teaching and applications, at once interesting, useful and eleva- 

 ting, should make their way into every district school. It may well be 

 doubted if the human kind will ever be merciful to itself without being 

 first merciful to the beast kind. For use and domestication do not con- 

 stitute cruelty, since in natural environments the end of the individual 

 is always violent — that is the weak are captured by the hunting ani- 

 mals, and the lion starves when no longer able to hunt. Conversely, 

 to exterminate the forms of the sea and land is repulsive. What a 

 degrading, miserable story is that of the hunt of the sea otter. 



