44 6 The Smithsonian Institution 



easy to extend this method so as to secure a considerable 

 collection of living animals. 



The National Museum was fortunate in having upon its 

 staff at that time Mr. William T. Hornaday, well known for 

 his unusual skill as a taxidermist, and for his travels in Bor- 

 neo and South America for the collection of specimens of 

 natural history. As his interest in the matter was very 

 great, a separate department of the National Museum, that 

 of living animals, was created, and of this he was appointed 

 curator. As a result of his energy and activity the museum 

 possessed, at the close of the fiscal year 1887 '88, no fewer 

 than two hundred and twenty living specimens. 



At this time public interest was much excited by the al- 

 most total extinction of the American buffalo or bison, which 

 once covered the country as far east as Virginia with herds 

 of almost countless numbers, and which, retreating before 

 civilization, had finally succumbed to the unchecked extrava- 

 gance of avaricious hunters and the repeating rifle until there 

 remained but a few herds, small in numbers and widely scat- 

 tered. This is one of the most striking and appalling cases 

 of the effect of the contact of man with animate nature, but 

 many others were also noted which, though less in degree, 

 showed all thoughtful people that most of the larger native 

 animals indigenous to this continent were doomed to extinc- 

 tion unless active measures were taken to protect and pre- 

 serve them. The great auk and the sea-cow of Steller are 

 now to be seen only in museum cases, and rank in the popu- 

 lar mind with the dodo and the megatherium ; the sea-ele- 

 phant has nearly if not wholly disappeared, and the manatee 

 is approaching extinction. The moose, the caribou, the 

 antelope, the mountain sheep and goat, the fur seal, the 

 sea otter, the Pacific walrus, and even the grizzly bear and 

 panther, are rapidly disappearing, and in a few generations 



