34 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PAliK. 



Ill the early i>iut of tliis century it naturalist traveling in Siberia 

 stood by the mutilated body of a niannnotli still undecayed, which the 

 melting of the frozen gravel had revealed, and to the skeleton of which 

 large portions of flesh, skin, and liair still clung. The remains were 

 excavated and transported many hundred miles across the frozen 

 waste, and at last reached the Imperial Museum at St. Petersburg, 

 where, through all these years, the mounted skeleton has justly been 

 regarded as the <;reatest treasure of that magniticent collection. 



Scieutitic memoirs, popular books, theological works, poems — iu 

 short, a whole literature — has come into existence with this discov- 

 ery as its text. No other event iu all the history of such subjects has 

 excited a greater or more permanent interest outside of purely scieu. 

 titic circles; for the resurrection of this relic of a geologic time in a 

 condition analogous to that in which the bodies of contemporaneous 

 animals are daily seen brings home to the mind of the least curious 

 observer the reality of a long extinct race with a vividness which no 

 fossils or petrifactions of the ordinary sort can i)ossibly equal. 



i^ow, I am assured by most competent naturalists that few, if any, 

 of those not particularly devoted to the study of American animals 

 realize that changes have already occurred or are on the point of taking 

 place in our own characteristic fauna compared with which the disap- 

 pearance from it of the mammoth was insignificant. That animal was 

 comnu)n to all northern lands in its day. The practical domestication 

 of the elephant gives to everyone the oppoitunity of observing a 

 gigantic creature closely allied to the mamnu)th,and from which he may 

 gain an approximately correct idea of it. But no such example is at 

 hand in the case of the bison, the })rong-horn antelope, the elk, theKocky 

 .Mountain goat, and many more of our vanishing races. 



The student of even the most modern text-books learns that the 

 characteristic larger animals of the United States are those just men- 

 tioned, with the moose, the grizzly bear, the beaver, and if we include 

 marine forms and arctic American animals we may add the northern 

 fnr-seal, the Pacific walrus, the Californian sea-elephant, the manatee, 

 and still others. 



With one or two exceptions out of this long list, men now living can 

 remember when each of these animals was reasonably abundant within 

 its natural territory. It is within the; bounds of moderation to attirm 

 that unless Congress places some check on the present rate of destruc- 

 tion there are men now living who will see the time when the animals 

 enumerated will be practically extinct, or exterminated within the lim- 

 its of the United States. xVlready the census of some of them can be 

 expressed in three figures. 



The fate of the bison, or American butialo, is typical of them all. 

 " Whether we consider this noble animal," says Audubon, " as an ob- 



