" We love things not because they are beautiful, but they are beautiful 



because we love them." 



*y**> 



The Guide to Nature 



EDUCATION AND RECREATION 



Vol. I 



APRIL, 1908 



No. 1 



II 



m OUTDOOR WORLD 



A Hunt for Extinct Animals 



By Prof, Earl Douglass 



Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, Pa. 





nun 



FTER a 

 thousand 



of 



voyage ot two 

 miles over the 

 prairie-ocean, I found my- 

 self on the rougher sea, in 

 the troughs of the great sol- 



^5> id, broken waves of the 



Rocky Mountains. I land- 

 ed in Helena, had all the summer before 

 me and all western Montana for my 

 hunting-ground. I was after rare game 

 which no one else had hunted in this re- 

 gion, so I had the field to myself. I 

 was not going to slay living animals, but 

 was gathering the precious remains of 

 those that had died long ages ago, when 

 there were no friends to shed a tear or 

 carve an inscription on the rocks telling 

 how and when they lived, or expressing 

 the hope that their bones should rise 



again. But there are records more true 

 than written ones, though he who runs 

 cannot read them ; he must go slow, stop, 

 dig, and poi.der long, for he is reading, 

 not from books which men have made 

 but from complex, mysterious, fascinat- 

 ing nature. 



Dr. Henry Van Dyke has said that 

 the charm of fishing is in its uncertainty. 

 That which is sure to come to pass has 

 little about it that is exciting or fascinat- 

 ing. Searching for the burial places of 

 those strange animals that roamed over 

 the green pastures and drank from the 

 refreshing pools and streams, hundreds 

 of millenniums before we came into pos- 

 session of them, certainly has all the 

 charm and fascination of uncertainty. 

 When one starts out he does not know 



Copyright 1908 by The Agassiz Association, Stamford, Conn- 



