-6 



NATURE 



[September ig, 1912 



bounds, and has radiated in every possible direction, 

 conquering woodland and prairies, the hills and the 

 plains, transcending barriers that had seemed impass- 

 ible, and perhaps itself breaking up into new local 

 races and varieties. It must be long since such a 

 triumphant progress was unattended by death and 

 destruction. When the first terrestrial animals crept 

 out of their marshes into the clean air of the dry land, 

 ihey had only plants and the avenging pressure of 

 physical forces to overcome. But when the Amphib- 

 ians were beaten b}' the Reptiles, and when from 

 amongst the Reptiles some insignificant species ac- 

 quired the prodigious possibility of transformation 

 to Mammals, and still more when amongst the 

 Mammals Eutherian succeeded Marsupial, Carnivore 

 tlie Creodont, and Man the Ape, it could have been 

 only after a fatal contest that the newcomers tri- 

 umphed. The struggle, we must suppose, was at first 

 most acute between animals and their nearest inferior 

 allies, as similarity of needs brings about the keenest 

 competition, but it must afterwards have been ex- 

 tended against lower and lower occupants of the 

 coveted territory. 



The human race has for long been the dominant 

 terrestrial species, and man has a wider capacity for 

 adaptation to different environments, and an infinitely 

 greater power of transcending geographical barriers 

 than have been enjoyed by any other set of animals. 

 For a considerable time many of the more primitive 

 tribes, especially before the advent of firearms, had 

 settled down into a kind of natural equilibrium with 

 the local mammalian fauna, but these tribes have 

 been first driven to a keener competition with the 

 lower animals, and then, in most parts of the world, 

 have themselves been forced almost or completely out 

 of existence. The resourceful and aggressive higher 

 races have now reached into the remotest parts of 

 the earth and have become the exterminators. It must 

 now be the work of the most intelligent and provident 

 amongst us to arrest this course of destruction, and to 

 preserve w'hat remains. 



In Europe, unfortunately, there is little left suffi- 

 ciently large and important to e.xcite the imagination. 

 There is the European bison, which has been extinct 

 in Western Europe for many centuries, whilst the last 

 was killed in East Prussia in 1755. There remains 

 a herd of about seven hundred in the forests of 

 Lithuania, strictly protected by the Tsar, whilst there 

 are truly wild animals, in considerable numbers, in 

 the Caucasus, small captive herds on the private 

 estates of the Tsar, the Duke of Pless and Count 

 Potocki, and a few individuals in various zoological 

 gardens. There is the beaver, formerly widespread 

 in Europe, now one of the rarest of living mammals, 

 and lingering in minute numbers in the Rhone, the 

 Danube, in a few Russian rivers, and in protected 

 areas in Scandinavia. The wolf and the bear have 

 shrunk to the recesses of thick forests and the 

 remotest mountains, gluttons to the most barren 

 regions of the north. The chamois survives by favour 

 of gaine-laws and the vast inaccessible areas to which 

 it can retreat, but the mouflon of Corsica and Sardinia 

 and the ibex in Spain are on the verge of extinction. 

 Everv little creature, from the otter, wild cat, and 

 marten to the curious desman, is disappearing. 



India contains the richest, the most varied, and, 

 from many points of view, the most interesting part 

 of the .Asiatic fauna. Notwithstanding the teeming 

 human population it has supported from time imme- 

 morial, the extent of its area, its dense forests and 

 jungles, its magnificent series of river valleys, moun- 

 tains, and hills have preserved until recent times a 

 fauna rich in individuals and species. The most casual 

 glance at the volumes bv sportsmen and naturalists 



NO. 2238. VOL. 90] 



written forty or fifty years ago reveals the delight and 

 wonder of travel in India so comparatively recently 

 as the time when the Association last met in Dundee. 

 Sir H. H. Johnston has borne witness that even in 

 1895 a journey " through almost any part of India 

 was of absorbing interest to the naturalist." .-Ml is 

 changed now, and there seems little doubt but that 

 the devastation in the wonderful, mammalian fauna 

 has been wrought chiefly by British military officers 

 and civilians, partly directh', and partly by their 

 encouragement of the sporting instincts of the Pvloham- 

 medan population and the native regiments, although 

 the clearing of forests and the draining of marshlands 

 have played an important contributory part. The tiger 

 has no chance against the modern rifle. The one- 

 horned rhinoceros has been nearly exterminated in 

 Northern India and .Assam. The magnificent gaur, 

 one of the most splendid of living creatures, has been 

 almost killed off throughout the limits of its range — 

 southern Indian and the Malay Peninsula. Bears and 

 wolves, wild dogs and leopards are persecuted 

 remorselessly. Deer and antelope have been reduced 

 to numbers that alarm even the most thoughtless 

 sportsmen, and wild sheep and goats are being driven 

 to the utmost limits of their range. 



When I speak of the fauna of Africa, I am always 

 being reminded of the huge and pathless areas of the 

 Dark Continent, and assured that lions and leopards, 

 elephants and giraffe still exist in countless numbers, 

 nor do I forget the dim recesses of the tropical forests 

 where creatures still lurk of which we have only the 

 vaguest rumour. But we know that South .Africa, 

 less than fifty years ago, was a dream that surpassed 

 the imagination of the most ardent hunter. .And we 

 know what it is now. It is traversed by railways, it 

 has been rolled over by the devastations of war. The 

 game that once covered the land in unnumbered 

 millions is now either extinct, like the quagga and 

 the black wildebeeste, or its scanty remnant lingers 

 in a few reserves and on a few farms. The sportsman 

 and the hunter have been driven to other parts of the 

 continent, and I have no confidence in the future 

 of the .African fauna. The Mountains of the Moon 

 are within range of a long vacation holiday. Civilisa- 

 tion is eating into the land from every side. All the 

 great European countries are developing their .African 

 possessions. There are exploring expeditions, punitive 

 expeditions, shooting and collecting expeditions. Rail- 

 ways are being pushed inland, water-routes opened 

 up. The land is being patrolled and policed and 

 taxed, and the wild animals are suffering. Let us go 

 back for a moment to the Transvaal and consider 

 what has happened since the Rand was opened, 

 neglecting the reserves. Lions are nearly extinct. 

 The hyaena has been trapped and shot and poisoned 

 out of existence. The eland is extinct. The giraffe is 

 extinct. The elephant is extinct. The rhinoceros is 

 extinct. The buffalo is extinct. The bontebok, the 

 red hartebeeste, the mountain zebra, the oribi, and the 

 grysbok are so rare as to be practically extinct. And 

 the same fate may at any time overtake the rest of 

 .Africa. The white man has learned to live in the 

 tropics; he is mastering tropical diseases; he has need 

 of the vegetable and mineral wealth that lie awaiting 

 him, and although there is yet time to save the .African 

 fauna, it is in imminent peril. 



When we turn to .Australia, with its fauna of unique 

 zoological interest, we come to a more advanced case 

 of the same disease. In igog Mr. G. C. Shortridge, 

 a very skilled collector, working for the British 

 Museum, published in the Proceedings of the Zoo- 

 logical Society of London the results of an investiga- 

 tion he had carried out on the fauna of Western Aus- 

 tralia south of the tropics, during the years 1904-7. 



