/•'.IS'/' i.wisiiiM; nr.conns 



271 



A sliort tiiiic :i,u(> we read wiili piiiiicd interest Mftieles on ;inini:ils tliut 

 h;i\-e i-eceiitly hecoine extinct soon it will he siini)lef to write of the iiiii- 

 mals that are left. Of eoiirse nni'l: of the externiination is, from man's 

 standpoint, iina\ oidahle. Man and wild heasts cannot li\c to>;cther in 

 liarmonx , he he ne\cr so willin.u'. W'e are all familiar with Kipling's f^nijihic 

 picture of " Lettinii in the -Inufile," and in .\frica, Mr. Akeley says that 

 this is no fancy sketch, for a few elephants in a single nif;ht will undo the 

 patient lal)or of years, tramplim^- dow n crops an<l upiootinfi; trees over many 

 acres of cultixated land. 



There are in c.xistence hoals in which hardy Xoi'semen may have cruised 

 along the coast of New iMigland before ("olumhus was horn; we have cjueer 

 craft that floated on the Nile in the time of I'haraoh, and canoes in which 

 the early Britons i)a(ldled down the Thames w hen the hyena howled on the 

 bank and the ca\e hear craslie<l throuu'h the imderhrush. We po.ssess 

 not a fragment of the strange Heothuk canoes seen hy ("ahot and (artier 

 and scarcely more than a splinter even of o!u> of the canoes that ho\-ere(l 

 about tlie "Half Moon" on her xoyage up the Hudson littl(> more than 

 three hundred years ago. We know far more about the l)eliefs, the c-us- 

 tonis, the dress of the early Egyptians than we do of those of the Indians 

 of Manhattan and Massachusetts. 



The savage takes little interest in posterity, his immediate concern is with 

 the present — to solve as easily as possil)le the problems of daily life. The 

 ever present tin can costs no labor save that of picking it up, so it supersedes 

 the basket; birch trees have become scarce and the picturescjue birch bark 

 canoe gives way to one covered with cotton cloth. So it is the world o\'er: 

 "The old order changeth 

 Yielding place to new" — 

 and if within a very few years wi' do not secure the vanishing wild animals 

 and not merely the fast disappearing utensils but also a record of the habits 

 and beliefs of wild — or once wild — races, they will be lost to us and to 

 the world forexcr. 



A part of ilic .Mu.scuiu'.s Ariliu K.\iHxliiiuii jjur.siiiiijj; iis wu,> over tliu snow and ice of 

 the Coppermine Kiver 



