THE WILD MAMMALS OF THE FARM 99 



Then there are a few little insect-eating mammals, like the 

 moles and the shrews in their burrows in the soil, and the bats 

 in the air, that perhaps are not greatly affected by the 

 changed conditions. Southward, there is the interesting 

 marsupial, the opossum, nocturnal, wary and elusive, holding 

 its own. 



The group of mammals includes those animals that are 

 most like us in structure and habits and mode of develop- 

 ment. Among them are our best servants, our best pro- 

 ducers of bodily comforts, our most direct competitors and 

 our most dangerous enemies. We have gathered the more 

 docile of those useful to us about our homes, and have made 

 them our more immediate servants. We have exploited their 

 untamable allies to the limit of our powers. So long as there 

 remained a toothsome body or a prized pelt, we spared not. 

 Our enemies and competitors we killed. At first it was done 

 in self-defense : of late, it has been done in sheer and wanton 

 love of slaughter. Improved weapons of destruction have 

 placed the larger beasts completely at our mercy, and we have 

 had no mercy. There remain with us one that we avoid, a 

 few that are too small to be deemed worthy of pursuit, and a 

 few that are able to elude us. At our approach the squirrels 

 hide from us in the trees; the gophers and their kind drop 

 into their burrows, the swamp-dwellers slip into the water, 

 and the wily foxes watch us from the thickets. Eternal 

 vigilance is the price of their safety. We may see little of 

 them when we walk in the woods or by the streamside, but 

 there are many pairs of sharp little eyes always watching us. 



Before the final disappearance of the larger species, it is 

 well that we are taking measures to keep a remnant of them 

 in game preserves : our descendants will want to know what 

 the native fauna of their native land was like. We do well, 

 also, to consider that each species we destroy is a final product 

 of the evolution of the ages. It is the outcome of the toil and 



