duction of wild animals from one country to another. The case 

 of the mongoose in Jamaica is a good illustration, and so well 

 known that it needs but a word of explanation. This mammal was 

 brought from India to rid Jamaica of its pest of rats. Being free 

 from its natural enemies, against which it had always competed in 

 India, it soon became more of a nuisance than the rats that it had 

 supplanted — in fact it completely upset the balance of nature, 

 until the government of the island offered a bounty on its head. 

 In spite of this unsavory chapter of natural history, it has re- 

 quired the most vigilant and determined opposition on the part of 

 the United States government to prevent the importation of the 

 mongoose by certain well meaning people, to the southern states 

 and to Hawaii. Australia has suffered the loss of millions of 

 dollars by the introduction of rabbits from England, merely to fur- 

 nish game for hunting. The English sparrow came to America, 

 by invitation, in 1850. We all know the result. The gypsy moth 

 was turned loose in Massachusetts in 1868 or '69, by an innocent 

 experimenter who wished to test its silk making powers. In twenty 

 years the state government began the task of exterminating the 

 moth, and now, after expending several millions of dollars, it finds 

 the moth slightly ahead in the race. It is not strange that some of 

 our scientific experts are trying to secure legislation that shall make 

 it a criminal offense to bring into the country any foreign animal 

 without the consent of some regularly constituted authority. 



The future of economic zoology is filled with marvellous pos- 

 sibilities, and bright with promise. Applied zoology has taken its 

 place among the arts and sciences of this progressive age and it has 

 - its skilled experts, its laboratories, its problems, and its solution 

 of some of the vexatious questions of the day. Every fish hatchery, 

 every experimental station, every agricultural college, and in a 

 growing degree, every biological laboratory in the world, is a center 

 for the prosecution of research and experiment in this vast field. 

 Every discovery in biology, however impractical and trivial it may 

 at first appear, conduces to some new triumph of man over the 

 plastic forces of the animate world. Let us now consider a few of 

 the lines along which the future achievements of this science are 

 likely to be worked out. 



1. We shall put a stop to the ruthless slaughter of our wild 



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