10 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



justly be classed as murder. The killing of an 

 American bison for a tongue to sell for fifty cents ; 

 the killing of a fine bull elk for a pair of misshapen 

 and ugly teeth worth a dollar; the killing of a 

 walrus "for fun" from the deck of a swiftly moving 

 steamer; the killing of a brown pelican merely to 

 see it fall, all these are crimes, and should be 

 classed in the annals of crime as murder. 



The murder of a wild-animal species consists in 

 taking from it that which man with all his cunning 

 never can give back, its God-given place in the 

 ranks of living things. Where is man's boasted 

 intelligence, or his sense of proportion, that every 

 man does not see the monstrous moral obliquity 

 involved in the destruction of a species ? 



Man, the greedy and wasteful spendthrift that 

 he is, has not created even the humblest of the 

 species of mammals, birds and fishes that adorn and 

 enrich this earth. With all his wisdom, and with all 

 his resources, man has not evolved and placed here 

 so much as a ground-squirrel, a sparrow or a clam. 

 It is true that he has juggled with the wild horse 

 and sheep, the goats and the swine, and produced 

 some hardy breeds that can withstand his abuse 

 without going down before it; but as for species, 

 man has not yet created and placed in the fauna of 

 this world so much as a protozoan. 



As it is with other forms of murder, there are 

 several degrees in wild-life extermination, each of 

 which should be understood. 



