44 THE HOUSE. 



and, except for his interference, there seemed no 

 reason why they might not have continued to do so 

 for ages yet. Explorers, hunters, and settlers, ac- 

 companied by the introduction of fire-arms into their 

 native haunts, have, however, settled their doom. 

 If events proceed as they are now doing, we may 

 safely predict that the time is not very far distant 

 when any living animal of the entire group of Peris- 

 sodactyles, except in a state of domestication, will 

 be a thing of the past. Under the rapidly changing 

 circumstances of the world, caused by the spread of 

 European civilization, it is not unlikely that the 

 most ancient form, the tapir, may yet survive all the 

 others, simply because it offers less inducement for 

 the exercise of the destructive propensities of the 

 modern sportsman, who is more responsible than any 

 one else for the change now taking place in the nor- 

 mal balance of animal life on the earth's surface. 

 In the next chapter this part of the subject will be 

 entered into rather more fully. 



