ADDRESSES OF MAJOR LACEY 155 



was the signal for the destruction of these vast herds. 

 They were slaughtered without mercy, for sport and for 

 profit. 



The most pitiful story in the history of all animal life 

 is Prof. William T. Hornaday's report on the extinction 

 of the American bison. The mania for slaughter seems 

 to have affected everyone. The English lord, the miner, 

 the cowboy, and the emigrant slew right and left, dotting 

 the plains with thousands upon thousands of tons of 

 bleaching bones that have since been gathered up and 

 transported to the sugar refineries on the Atlantic coast. 

 These herds, that could have readily been converted into 

 domestic animals and preserved as a permanent source 

 of wealth, have been literally swept from the face of the 

 earth. 



The cattle which have taken their place are unable to 

 withstand the rigors and severity of the changeable cli- 

 mate. Where the bison turned his head to the storm and 

 fought it out with the blizzard, the American cattle of 

 today turn tail to the wind and drift to destruction. The 

 bison was clothed expressly to resist the severity of the 

 climate in which he was living. Prehistoric man, in his 

 long warfare against the mammoth, left not one to tell 

 the tale. Necessity for food, no doubt, was his excuse, 

 and the slow breeding of these gigantic beasts made the 

 extermination comparatively easy. When America was 

 discovered the bison was the king of American beasts. 

 By ages of gradual modification and natural selection an 

 animal was developed fitted in the most admirable way 

 for a life in the vast region from Hudson Bay and Great 

 Slave Lake to the Gulf of Mexico. 



The United States government has tardily attempted to 

 preserve some of the wonders of nature on the continent. 

 The word "extinction" does not quite literally apply to 

 the bison, but we have arrived at a point where nothing 



