ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN. 



505 



of the wild creatures. Lastly, the Society be- 

 lieves in discouraging and limiting the use of 

 firearms throughout the country at large. The 

 necessity for carrying firearms has now passed 

 away forever. In fact, it has lasted too long in 

 the United States, as a comparative study of the 

 development and civilization of our western 

 states with those of western Canada, will easily 

 demonstrate. 



From the day when man became man and 

 walked erect, some four or five hundred thou- 

 sand years ago, down to our own day and gen- 

 eration, he has been engaged in a ceaseless bat- 

 tle with his fellow inhabitants of the earth. 

 Down to the dawn of the historical period, this 

 battle, waged at first against the sabre-tooth 

 tiger, the cave bear and the hyenadon, was more 

 than doubtful, and only man's co-operation with 

 his fellows, his protection by fire, and his use 

 of dogs as hunting allies, gave him the victory. 

 The struggle continued with renewed violence 

 whenever man entered upon new territory. Cen- 

 tury by century his organization became better 

 and his weapons more effective, until during 

 the Neolithic period, his superiority over the 

 brutes became definite. From that period, 

 man's advance to the complete mastery of the 

 globe has advanced by leaps and bounds, and 

 this generation has the unique privilege of 

 standing literally at the close of this long bat- 

 tle, and at the opening of the new period, which 

 is immediately ahead of us, when man will share 

 the earth only with such survivors of the world's 

 fauna as he may choose to tolerate. From pres- 

 ent appearances the only exception to this will 

 be insects and rats. On this generation then 

 rests the responsibility of saying what forms of 

 life shall be preserved, in what localities, and on 

 what terms. Let us not delude ourselves for a 

 moment by believing that primitive hunting con- 

 ditions can ever be restored. The bison and the 

 sheep, the antelope and the wapiti, as game ani- 

 mals have already disappeared or are doomed. So 

 far as wild hunting is concerned, the best that 

 can be hoped for are the highly artificial condi- 

 tions which prevail on the continent of Europe 

 to-day, and these are not attractive to anyone who 

 has known the free life of the true woodsman. 

 Let us not suppose for a moment that our pres- 

 ent game laws, or any improvement or modifica- 

 tion of them, can ever permanently 2 ;,rnv i < Ie 

 hunting in the face of the commercial necessi- 

 ties of the future, but let us rather bend our 

 energies to selecting certain portions of our na- 

 tional domain, and establish and strictly main- 

 tain sanctuaries for some portion of the wild 

 things that have come down to us from the past. 



THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY'S WORK 

 FOR WILD LIFE. 



By Henry Fairfield Osborn. 



THE grand object to which the Zoological 

 Society has chiefly devoted itself during the 

 past ten years, namely a great Zoological 

 Park, depends for the future on the preserva- 

 tion of wild animal life, because, without re- 

 newals from the wilderness, our collections will 

 gradually die out and disappear. 



In spreading the love of animals we have al- 

 ready made thousands, perhaps millions, of new 

 friends for wild life. Now we propose to unite 

 them all in a great campaign of conservation. 

 This Bulletin is not our first gun, but it is our 

 first broad-side. 



Our work will be mainly directed to the state 

 and public lands of North America, but we shall 

 also co-operate with the great conservation 

 movement in all parts of the world, through a 

 special committee backed by the sentiment and 

 funds from the Society and our future endow- 

 ments. 



Tree preservation in the United States is 

 pressing, but it is less pressing than animal 

 preservation. Trees can be replanted or pre- 

 served from seeds, but an animal once gone is 

 lost to the world forever. Nature has been at 

 work millions of years creating some of these 

 exquisite pieces of mechanism and beauty. 

 There is at least a million years' history back 

 of the prong-horned antelope, which is on the 

 danger line to-day. We find its diminutive for- 

 bears existing on the plains of South Dakota, 

 before the Rocky Mountains were completely 

 formed, and when fig-trees and the bread-fruit 

 flourished in Montana. 



The Virginia deer has even an older known 

 pedigree, two million years back, perhaps. This 

 long and noble ancestry gives fresh force to the 

 appeal for preservation. 



Laws enacted in the very best spirit will not 

 absolutely protect. They will help, but in very 

 many of the outlying districts, where the rare 

 game still seeks a refuge, there is no one to 

 enforce the law, and very little sentiment in its 

 favor. Animals are destroyed not for sport but 

 for meat. In the Hell Creek region of Mon- 

 tana, which a few years ago abounded in prong- 

 horned antelope, mountain sheep and black- 

 tailed deer, the destruction has been entirely for 

 meat, and we must admit it is but natural that it 

 is so. The least defensible form of butchery is 

 the extermination of game in the name of sport. 

 The meat-hunter is solitary, he works through- 

 out the year, he knows his distant neighbors 

 will not inform upon him, and that in any case 



