-»i The Survivors 



securing well-developed male specimens, as the hunter does, 

 but also females and young animals In all the various stages 

 of growth and colouring. This must be obvious even to 

 a child, and no one will deny to science the right so to act, 

 at least in those regions of Africa which — in comparison 

 with India and other countries — are still untouched by civili- 

 sation, and which therefore, in their primitive unchanged 

 condition, afford us doubly interesting results. Now sup- 

 posing one has got together large collections, and has been 

 so fortunate as to succeed In bringing them down to the 

 coast and home to Europe. A collection of insects or of 

 the lower animals may pass without remark ; but woe to 

 the slayer of the larger species of wild animals ! These 

 come under the description of " beasts of the chase,' and 

 now a peculiar kind of bacillus quickly develops — the 

 bacillus of "hostility to the hunter," which. Introduced Into 

 Europe from the tropics, finds here, too, a fostering soil. 

 Let me be allowed to endeavour to find a prophylactic 

 against this bacillus in these essays. I have already often 

 laid stress upon the facts that such great quantities of the 

 skins and feathers of birds are exported for the purposes 

 of fashion, that by this trade whole species are threatened 

 with extinction ; that every individual European Is allowed, 

 without any hindrance, to send home his trophies of the 

 chase — trophies which, with only a few exceptions, can 

 have hardly any value for science ; above all, that the 

 extermination of the elephant in Africa is being carried out 

 before our very eyes for the sake of his ivory ; and that all 

 this Is held permissible. But let one make collections for 

 scientific purposes, and scrupulously hand over every skin, 



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