34 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



NATIONAL ZOOLOGICAL PARK. 



In tbe early part of this century a naturalist traveling in Siberia 

 stood by the mutilated bodj^ of a niammotb still undecayed, wbich tbe 

 melting of tbe frozen gravel bad revealed, and to tbe skeleton of wbicb 

 large portions of flesb, skin, and bair still clung. Tbe 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 greatest treasure of that magnificent collection. 



Scientific memoirs, popular books, theological works, poems — in 

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

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

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

 tific circles; for the resurrection of this Velic of a geologic time in a 

 condition analogous to that in wbich the bodies of contemporaneous 

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

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

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



Now, 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 tbe point of taking 

 place in our own characteristic fauna comi)ared with wbich the disap- 

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

 common to all northern lands in its day. The practical domestication 

 of the elephant gives to every one the opportunity of observing a 

 gigantic creature closely allied to the mammoth, and from which be may 

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

 hand in the case of the bison, the prong-born antelope, the elk, the Rocky 

 Mountain goat, and many more of our vanishing races. 



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

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

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

 marine forms and arctic American animals we may add tbe northern 

 fur-seal, tbe Pacific walrus, the Califoruian 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 affirm 

 that unless Congress places some check on tbe 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 tbe United States. Already tbe census of some of them can be 

 expressed in three figures. 



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

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



