684 MARINE ANIMALS OF NORTHWEST COAST. 



was tired of buttoning and unbuttoning, the average citizen would lind 

 such monotony unendurable. The day when circuses are shorn of 

 their attendant menageries will sensibly diminish the gayety of nations 

 and deprive the youthful of a most cherished source of amusement 

 and instruction. Without its bears and wolves, leopards and tigers, 

 elephants and hippopotami, the natural world would have far less 

 interest and the distant day of its final extinction would be palpably 

 foreshadowed. 



It is said of man that he shall inherit the earth; and as population 

 grows this prophecy is gradually being fulfilled. Though there are 

 deserts in the south, swamps and tundra in the north, and mountain 

 ranges everywhere, where man can not find a subsistence or create a 

 home, no doubt can exist that in the fullness of time all productive 

 regions of the earth's surface will be occupied; and only such animals 

 in the wild state as can secure subsistence from the most inhospitable 

 areas can be expected to survive. 



The sea, however, is different. Here man, who began by risking 

 from the shore, then whitened the ocean highways with the canvas of 

 his sailing ships, and now blackens them from the smoking funnels of 

 the sea tramp or the majestic liner, is distinctly a temporary sojourner. 

 He embarks upon the sea because he must cross it, or carry the goods 

 of others across it; because for a brief season he enjoys trying his wit 

 and strength against the forces of nature and defying her barriers; 

 or because he seeks to wrest her treasures from the sea. However 

 crowded the continents may be, it seems improbable that men. away 

 from their shores, will ever make their homes upon the sea. 



There is then some hope for the marine animals. There will always 

 be food for them, always a vast extent of ocean for them to roam in 

 undisturbed, and no man will grudge them the occupancy of the reefs 

 and sandbars which they may seek, at certain seasons, to bring forth 

 their young or lie untroubled in the sunshine. 



Whatever may be the ultimate fate of the purely terrestrial animals, 

 in a sense competitors with man, there is no sufficient reason why the 

 marine animals may not survive on the globe as long as man himself. 

 The latter, from a geological standpoint, but recently feral himself, 

 still preserves in great strength certain primal instincts. There is a 

 legend of two Englishmen who. hunting in the wilds of central Asia, 

 during the temporary absence of the seraphic guardians, ignorant ly 

 came to pitch their tent in the Garden of Eden. Waking with the light 

 of dawn when the descendants of the animals named by our first par- 

 ent were in primeval amity, wandering peacefully over the green 

 slopes before him, one of the intruders looked from the door of his 

 tent and shouted to his comrade, : Wake up! wake up! Here is a 

 chance to kill something! 1 ' Whether this be authentic or not, it is cer- 

 tain that the desire to kill is one of the most general and strenuous 



