148 The Bible of Nature 



The strange facts as to the entire passing away 

 of animal races, like the parallel facts in regard to 

 particular human races, cannot fail to raise, and 

 ought to raise, a question as to the endurance of 

 our own modern races. It sends a chill to patri- 

 otic hearts to think of any human race passing 

 wholly away, and yet such things have been. So 

 far as a race goes on accumulating organic debts 



types. Long ago life was like a great army always losing 

 from its ranks, but yet always gaining new recruits. Now 

 it seems as if it only loses. This may be partly due to the 

 fact that careful scientific records extend over a very short 

 time, but it is also due to our gross carelessness of life. 

 We can breed a little, but we cannot any longer domesti- 

 cate. There is some success with Bacteria, for we are 

 breeding new species, and we are apparently learning to 

 tame old ones. But the present point is our carelessness 

 in elimination. On one occasion, some thirty years ago, no 

 fewer than one hundred and four African elephants were 

 destroyed in one great battue a dismal butchery, which 

 for obvious reasons will never occur again. The story of 

 the American bison is familiar. The great baleen whale is 

 verging on extinction; the quagga has probably gone; the 

 great white rhinoceros the largest terrestrial mammal 

 after the elephant is almost gone; the giraffe is fading 

 away, and so on through a dismal list. Mr. Martin's Cas- 

 torologia: the book of the beaver, might be described as 

 the funeral oration on a dying race. The tale of disap- 

 pearing birds is heart-rending, and here we may quote a 

 paragraph from one of our most picturesque naturalists, 

 Mr. C. T. Hudson. After describing the American ostrich 

 or Rhea notable for its fleetness, " great staying powers, 

 and beautiful strategy when hunted," and for its strange 

 habit of " running with one wing raised vertically, like a 



