C( )RRESPONDENCE AND INFORMATION 



171 



bereaved mother. We keep a pet cat 

 and drown the surplus kittens — etc., 

 etc., etc. 



No article the writer has seen has 

 given the impression of Mr. Roosevelt 

 gloating" over dying agonies. Certain- 

 ly those brief moments are not the 

 only interests of an expedition such 

 as this has been, nor the only infor- 

 mation with which the public has been 

 regaled. The statement is made that 

 nothing was killed that was not wanted 

 for food or for museum specimens. 

 Of course, if he had not gone to Africa 

 he would have no caravan to feed, but 

 doubtless the same negros would have 

 been killing other animals for them- 

 selves, as they must eat, whether they 

 work for Mr. Roosevelt or not. 



And among the many questions to 

 be struggled with is — are museums 

 justifiable? If so, they must have 

 specimens ; and these will be fur- 

 nished either by men who love the 

 chase or by men who simply kill for 

 hire. Which is better? Or which to 

 be condemned? 



As for the wonder "why He does not 

 reach down and stay the bloody work" 

 — well, when we remember that He 

 did not interfere with the regular 

 practice (not very long ago) of men 

 shooting from car windows into the 

 herds of buffalo on our plains, killing 

 and wounding as they could, and leav- 

 ing the victims useless where they fell 

 — when He did not interfere with the 

 ruthless murder of the great awk by 

 sailors and others who ran amuck 

 among them, killing simply because 

 they had found something which could 

 not run away — when He did not stop 

 the extermination of the Egret heron 

 by the brutal slaughter of the nesting 

 mothers and the starving of helpless 

 young; or the sacrifice of thousands 

 of song birds; or the killing of hun- 

 dreds of noble elk merely for their 

 teeth : all for vanity pampered through 

 greed of gold — when He did not stay 

 the fate of the beautiful passenger 

 pigeons, which were clubbed from 

 their roosting trees and fed to the hogs 

 — it is perhaps not to be wondered at 

 that He does not interfere with a 

 hunter of Mr. Roosevelt's type. 



And there is perhaps another rea- 

 son, namely: that He knows that a 

 gazelle killed by a well-aimed bullet 

 will suffer less than if the hunter 

 stayed his hand and the little creature 

 lived (perhaps but another day) to be 

 pulled down and torn to pieces by a 

 lion or tiger. 



Indeed, one great drawback to the 

 study of natural history — not in the 

 laboratory, but through field and for- 

 est, until one comes to know and un- 

 derstand and love the wild folk, is the 

 shadow of the tragedy that awaits 

 them all. And knowing, as we can- 

 not help knowing if we study life at 

 all, that most of the tenants of the 

 globe were created to prey upon each 

 other — that perhaps no moment of 

 time passes, or has passed for count- 

 less ages, that some wild creature, of 

 high or low degree, was not struggling 

 in an agonizing death, it is not sur- 

 prising that the foundations of heaven 

 are not shaken because some animals 

 fall by bullet instead of by teeth and 

 claws. 



All this is not to justify the boy 

 who pulls off the legs of grasshoppers. 

 We kill all injurious insects, but need 

 not torture them. Also kindness to 

 the animals that we have always with 

 us is certainly not in vain, as they live 

 to enjoy or suffer, according as we 

 treat them; but this is aside from the 

 question of what animals may be 

 killed, and why. 



Of course the point of Mrs. Dar- 

 ragh's accusation is largely the ques- 

 tion of the spirit in which the killing is 

 done, but possibly her sympathies have 

 led her to be unjust, and injustice 

 never helped any good cause ; and in 

 view of the facts briefly mentioned, 

 and the endless list that might be 

 cited, is it fair to single out Mr. Roose- 

 velt as a hideous example of wanton 

 cruelty — with no rebuke for the emi- 

 nent scientists who accompanied him, 

 to preserve for the benefit of mankind 

 the specimens obtained (as well as to 

 trap and shoot many birds, small 

 mammals, etc., themselves), and no 

 weighing of his reasons for killing, as 

 compared with the reasons for the 

 killing which goes on all around us 



