THE NATIONAL ZOO AT WASHINGTON. 699 



freedom from troubles that we attribute to uric acid in the blood, or 

 the buffalo's and the flamingo's immunity from the deadliest malaria, 

 is on the way to conferring like immunities on man. Kadi advance 

 of science enables us to get more fads out of the same source, so thai 

 something that is studied to-day may yield a hundred times the value 

 that it could or did ten years ago; and if that source of knowledge 

 happens to be perishable, one can do the race no greater harm than by 

 destroying it. 



The Sibylline books were supposed to contain all necessary wisdom; 

 they were destroyed, one by one. because the natural heir to that 

 wisdom did not realize their value. He did waken up at last, but it 

 was too late to save anything except a fragment. What Tarquin did 

 to the books offered by the C'unnean Sibyl, our own race in America 

 has done to some much more valuable books offered by nature. To 

 illustrate: Each animal is in itself an inexhaustible volume of facts 

 that man must have, to solve the great problem of knowing himself. 

 One by one, not always deliberately, these wonderful volumes have 

 been destroyed, and the facts that might have been read in them have 

 been lost. 



It is hard to imagine a greater injury to the world of thought, 

 which is. after all, the real world, than the destruction of one of these 

 wonderful unread volumes. It is possible that the study of "man" 

 would suffer more by the extinction of some highly organized animal 

 than it did by the burning of the Alexandrian library. This is why 

 men of science have striven so earnestly to save our native animals 

 from extinction. 



In 1878 there were still millions of buffalo in the West. That year 

 the Northern Pacific Railroad opened up the Missouri region, and 

 the annual slaughter was greatly increased. In 18s^ there were still 

 thousands of buffalo. In 1884 all were gone but a few small, scattered 

 bands. In 1885 there were probably less than five hundred buffalo 

 left alive in the United States. In 1886 an expedition fitted out by 

 the Government secured with great difficulty enough specimens to 

 make the mounted groups in the National Museum, and it was then 

 clear that unless the authorities took immediate and vigorous steps, 

 the buffalo, within a year or two, would cease to exist. 



About this time there appeared a number of articles by well-known 

 observers, calling attention to the fact that the buffalo's fate was also 

 awaiting, in the near future, all our finest animals, the probable order 

 of extinction being buffalo, elk. antelope, moose, bighorn sheep, 

 mountain goat, mule deer, Virginia deer; and the farthest probable 

 date for the ruthless consummation was put at twenty years hence. 

 It required no great argument to convince the public of the truth of 

 these writers' main statements. It was obvious that no possible good 

 was to be gained by exterminating these harmless animals, for the 



