NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 27. Vol IV. MAY. 1894. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



The Extinction of Wild Animals. 



ITTE were glad to see in the Pall Mall Gazette, early in April, an 

 Vt excellent, if somewhat tardy, notice of Dr. Hart Merriam's 

 Bulletin on the American Hawks and Owls. Zoological periodicals, 

 from time to time, attempt to impress upon the public the necessity 

 for concerted effort, to prevent the wholesale extinction all over the 

 world of those animals which interest the sportsman, either directly for 

 their own sakes, or indirectly because they rival, or are supposed to rival, 

 him in his attacks upon game. But, save by publishing an occasional 

 set of letters, on the decoration of the human female by the skins of 

 birds, the general papers take little interest in wild animals. So-called 

 birds of prey form one field in which general papers like the morning 

 and evening dailies might both interest their readers and assist 

 zoologists. Here is another. The extremely interesting and peculiar 

 fauna of Africa is becoming rarer year by year. At a recent meeting 

 of the Zoological Society, African hunters from various parts of that 

 continent were present, and all of them had to tell how animals, a 

 few years ago abundant near the coast, must now be sought a month's 

 journey inland. Will no paper take up the cry " Africa for African 

 animals " ? At the least the various European Powers might be 

 persuaded to do something for the indigenous fauna of their vast 

 hinterlands. The hunter is a curious survival of the instincts of 

 primitive man, and it may be that he, too, should have place in the 

 international preserves of Africa. But the mere sportsman must be 

 either suppressed or regulated, elsethehighlandsof Africa will become 

 as devoid of large animals as the heights of Dartmoor. 



Lord Lilford on the Preservation of Wild Birds. 



On the same subject hear Lord Lilford : ** A cry comes up from 

 many parts of our islands," he remarks (in the National Review for 

 April), " that many of our native birds are rapidly disappearing." 



