INTRODUCTION vii 



knowledge of the life, habits, and migrations of various market- 

 able marine fishes, their rate of growth, and the organisms upon 

 which they feed : subjects to which I shall have occasion to refer 

 in the chapter on marine fishes. 



The occupation of wide areas of hitherto virgin country by 

 civilised man is producing the most profound changes in the dis- 

 tribution of animal life, owing to the incessant and often sense- 

 less war of extermination which he wages upon the so-called 

 " lower animals " in his conquest of the wild. Of the vast herds 

 of bison which roamed the prairies of North America seventy 

 years ago, but a few hundred head, if so many, survive to-day, 

 carefully sheltered in reservations and zoological gardens. The 

 fur seal has also been nearly exterminated, and the whales are 

 doomed. Unless active steps are taken to protect them, the same 

 fate awaits the whole of the large and many of the small quad- 

 rupeds, with the exception of those already under or amenable 

 to domestication, and another hundred years will probably see 

 their total extinction. So, too, with many of the birds ; every 

 year sees the disappearance of some gaily coloured species that 

 helped alive to make the face of the earth more beautiful, slaugh- 

 tered as an offering to woman's vanity, to satiate the barbaric 

 lust of Fashion ; while the so-called " sportsman " who shoots 

 every rare bird at sight and the misguided agriculturist who can- 

 not distinguish between those birds which, as insect eaters, are 

 his best friends, and those which take serious toll of his seed, 

 help on the work of destruction. That man will have to pay 

 bitterly in the future for this ruthless destruction there can be 

 no doubt, for the balance of Nature cannot be upset with im- 

 punity. The destruction of carnivorous animals automatically 

 removes the natural check on the increase of those plant-devour- 

 ing animals which formed their prey ; while the disappearance of 

 many species of birds can only foster the steady increase of crop- 

 devouring hordes of insects. 



It is impossible nowadays for one man to write or speak 

 authoritatively out of his own personal knowledge upon the whole 



