OF WILD ANIMALS 67 



The most primitive is the tribe of "canoe Indians" of Tierra 

 del Fuego, which probably represents the lowest rung of the 

 human ladder. Beside them the cave men of 30,000 years ago 

 were kings and princes. Their only rivals seem to be the 

 Poonans of Central Borneo, who, living in a hot country, make 

 no houses or shelters of any kind, and have no clothing but a 

 long strip of bark cloth around the loins. 



The Fuegians have long been known to mariners and 

 travellers. They inhabit a region that half the year is bleak, 

 cold and raw, but they make nothing save the rudest of the 

 rude in canoes — of rough slabs tied together and caxLlked with 

 moss, — and rough bone-pointed spears, bows, arrows and 

 paddles. Their only clothing consists of skins of the guanacos 

 loosely hung from the neck, and flapping over the naked and 

 repulsive body. They make no houses, and on shore their 

 only shelters from the wind and snow and chilling rains are 

 rabbit-like forms of brush, broken off by hand. 



These people are lower in the scale of intelligence than any 

 wild animal species known to me; for they are mentally too 

 dull and low to maintain themselves on a continuing basis. 

 Their hundred years of contact with man has taught them 

 little; and numerically they are decreasing so rapidly that the 

 world will soon see the absolute finish of the tribe. 



In the best of the three tribes, the Tchuelclus, the birth 

 rate is so low that within recent times the tribe has diminished 

 from about 5,000 to a remnant of about 500. 



Now, have those primitive creatures "immortal souls?" 

 Are they entitled to call chimpanzees, elephants, bears and 

 dogs "lower animals?" Do they "think," or "reason," any 

 more than the animals I have named? 



It is a far cry from the highest to the lowest of the human 

 race; and we hold that the highest animals intellectually.are 

 higher than the lowest men. 



Now go with me for a moment to the lofty and dense 

 tropical forest in the heart of the Territory of Selangor, in the 

 Malay Peninsula. That forest is the home of the wild elephant. 



