698 THE NATIONAL ZOO AT WASHINGTON. 



our race. Who can decide which has done more for mankind, the 

 cow or the steam engine, the horse or electricity, the sheep or the 

 printing press, the dog or the rifle, the ass or the loom? No one, 

 indeed, can pronounce on these, yet all on reflection feel that there is 

 reason in the comparisons. Take away these inventions, and we are 

 put back a centur} , or perhaps two; but further, take away the domes- 

 tic animals, and we are reduced to al)solute savager}^, for it was they 

 who first made it possible for our aboriginal forefathers to settle in 

 one place and learn the rudiments of civilization. 



And it is quite possible, though of course not demonstrable, that 

 the humble chuckle barn-fowl has been a larger benefactor of our race 

 than any mechanical invention in our possession, for there is no inhab- 

 ited country on earth to-day where the l^arn fowl is not a mainstay of 

 health. There are vast regions of South America and Europe where 

 it is the mainstay, and nowhere is there known anything that can take 

 its place, which is probably more than can be said of anything in the 

 world of mechanics. 



Now, if the early hunters of these our domestic animals had suc- 

 ceeded in exterminating them before their stock was domesticated, 

 which easily might have been, for domestication succeeds only after 

 long and persistent effort and, in effect, a remodeling of the wild 

 animal by select breeding, the loss to the world would have been a 

 ver}^ serious matter, probably much more serious than the loss of any 

 invention, because an idea, being born of other ideas, can be lost but 

 temporarily, while the destruction of an organized being is irreparable. 



And we to-day, therefore, who deliberately exterminate an}^ large 

 and useful, possibly domesticable, wild animal, ma}^ be doing more 

 harm to the country than if we had robbed it of its navy. 



This is the most obvious economic view of the question of extermi- 

 nation. But there is another, a yet higher one, which, in the end, 

 will prove more truly economic. We are informed, on excellent 

 authority, that man's most important ))usiness here is to "know 

 himself.'' 



Evidently one can not comprehend the nature of a wheel in a 

 machine by study of that wheel alone; one nuist consider the whole 

 machine or fail. And since it is established that man is merely a 

 wheel in the great machine called the universe, he can never arrive at 

 a comprehension of himself without study of the other wheels also. 

 Therefore, to know himself man must study not only himself, but all 

 things to which he is related. This is the motive of all scientific 

 research. 



There is no part of our environment that is not filled with precious 

 facts bearing on the 'great problem,' and the nearer they are to us 

 the more they contain for us. He who will explain the house spar- 

 row's exemption from bacteriological infections, the white bear's 



