226 THE MINDS AND MANNERS 



some very remarkable conditions. The enormous output, up 

 to date, of skulls of huge lions, wolves, sabre-toothed tigers, 

 bears and other predatory animals, shows, for once, just what 

 the camels, llamas, deer, bison and mammoths of those days 

 had to do, to be, and to suffer in order to survive. 



With the aid of a little serious study, it is by no means diffi- 

 cult to recognize the hard laws that have enabled the elephant, 

 bison, sheep, goats, deer, antelope, gazelles, fur-seal, walrus and 

 others to survive and increase. From the wild animal herds 

 and bird flocks that we have seen and personally known, we 

 know what their laws are, and can set them down in the order of 

 their evolution and importance. 



The First Law. There shall be no fighting in the family, 

 the herd or the species, at any other time than in the mating season; 

 and then only between adult males who fight for herd leadership. 



The destructiveness of intertribal warfare, either organized 

 or desultory, must have been recognized in Jurassic times, 

 millions of years ago, by the reptiles of that period. Through- 

 out the animal kingdom below man the blessings of peace now 

 are thoroughly known. This first law is obeyed by all species 

 save man. We doubt whether all the testimony of the rocks 

 added together can show that one wild species of vertebrate 

 life ever really was exterminated by another species, not even 

 excepting the predatory species which lived by killing. 



No one (so far as we know) has charged that the lions, or 

 the tigers, the bears, the orcas, the eagles or the owls have ever 

 obliterated a species during historic times. It was the swine 

 of civilization, transplanted by human agencies, that ex- 

 terminated the dodo on the Island of Mauritius; and it was men, 

 not birds of prey, who swept off the earth the great auk, the 

 passenger pigeon and a dozen other bird species. 



The Second Law. The strong members of a Hock or herd 

 shall not bully nor oppress the weak. 



This law, constantly broken by degenerate and vicious men, 

 women and children, very rarely is broken in a free wild herd 



