Ey Seed > see eT 
ape ae ee ae 
: 
Ei 
a 
2 
Miscellaneous Intelligence. 475 
and a population unused to warfare. It is that of Spaniards with 
: h 
_ matchlocks and coats of mail against Aztecs with feather cloaks 
and bows and arrows. Mala salus victis. ew years, and the 
majority of native species are exterminated. But this is not the 
t. e species which perish most quickly are just those 
that naturalists would most wish to preserve; for they are those 
veculiar and endemic forms that in structure and constitution rep- 
resent the ancient state of things upon the earth, and supply us 
with some of the most instructive evidence as to the order of 
nature. 
With the progress of civilization it is plain that there will soon 
be hardly a land but will bear the standard of a European nation 
or of a community of European descent, and, as things are going 
be overrun by their imports. If this were inevitable, it would 
be useless to complain. But is it inevitable? Is it not obvious 
or careless in the importance of the subject? I cannot divest my- 
self of the belief that the course of the next century will see the 
extirpation, not only of most of the peculiar faunas I had in view 
a few minutes ag t of a great multitude of other species of 
d such extirpation is not merely a matter of sentiment. 
Here sentiment and science are for once on the same side. A 
g- ee 
But outside this audience there are many who care little for 
Consequences like these. Such persons may, however, be um 
presse d by thinking that the indiscriminate destruction of animals 
iting the slaughter of the sea-otter and the fur-seals of the adjacent 
. the assistance we get from Siberia, our supply of ivory will con- 
