224 BIRD WATCHING 



state, I am forgetting that such hardly any longer 

 exist. The great herds of bisons, zebras, antelopes, 

 giraffes, etc., that once roamed over places now given 

 over to humanity (and inhumanity) have disappeared, 

 and what have we learnt from them? Who has 

 watched them — at least very carefully or patiently — 

 with thoughts other than of their slaughter ? I know 

 of no careful record of their movements, taken from 

 hour to hour and from day to day. A few generali- 

 ties, conveying some of the more obvious and striking 

 facts — or what seemed to be so — will alone survive 

 their extinction. Enlightened curiosity has been 

 drowned in bloodthirstiness, and the coarse pleasure 

 of killing has over-ridden in us the higher ones of 

 observation and inference. We have studied animals 

 only to kill them, or killed them in order to study 

 them. Our " zoologists " have been thanatologists. 

 Thus the knowledge gleaned even by the sportsman- 

 naturalist has been scant and bare, for — besides that 

 the proportions of the mixture are generally as 

 Falstaff and Falstaff's page — there is little to be seen 

 between the sighting of the quarry and the crack of 

 the rifle. Observation has commonly left off just 

 where it should have begun. 



Had we as often stalked animals in order to observe 

 them, as we have in order to kill them, how much 

 richer might be our knowledge! 



