REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 39 



1890, in which, referring to the history of similar attempts, 

 he said: 



•• In the early part of this century a naturalist traveling in 

 Siberia stood by the mutilated body of a mammoth still unde- 

 cayed, which the melting- of the frozen gravel had revealed, 

 and to the skeleton of which large portions of flesh, skin, and 

 hair 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 greatest treasure of that magnificent collection. 



4 'Scientific memoirs, popular books, theological works, 

 poems — in short, a whole literature — has come into existence 

 with this discovery as its text. No other event in all the his- 

 tory of such subjects has excited a greater or more permanent 

 interest outside of purely scientific circles; for the resurrec- 

 tion 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 possibly equal. 



" Now, I am assured by most competent naturalists that few, 

 if any, of those not particularly devoted to the study of Ameri- 

 can animals realize that changes have already occurred or are 

 on the point of taking place in our own characteristic fauna 

 compared with which the disappearance from it of the mam- 

 moth was insignificant. That animal was common to all 

 northern lands in its day. The practical domestication of 

 the elephant gives to everyone the opportunity of observing 

 a gigantic creature closely allied to the mammoth, 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 

 prong-horn 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 

 the characteristic larger animals of the United States are those 

 just mentioned, with the moose, the grizzly bear, the beaver, 

 and if we include marine forms and arctic American animals 

 we may add the northern fur seal, the Pacific walrus, the 

 Californian sea elephant, the manatee, and still others. 



Wb With one or tw T o exceptions out of this long list, men now 

 living can remember when each of these animals was reason- 

 ably abundant within its natural territory. It is within the 

 bounds of moderation to affirm that unless Congress places 

 some check on the present rate of destruction there are men 

 now living who will see the time when the animals enumerated 

 will be practically extinct, or exterminated within the limits 



