there were over 311,000; while in 1896 there were said to be 36(5,000 

 species of animals having scientific names and recorded in the 

 books. It is popularly believed that Adam finished the business 

 of naming the animals before he left his residence in Eden, but 

 we see from the figures just quoted that our own contemporaries 

 found and named in the last three-quarters of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury nearly 300,000 that Adam in his hurry had overlooked. And 

 lest any one should think that the task was completed by the dawn 

 of the twentieth century, we are told that the sum total of animal 

 species is probably no less than ten millions. Indeed, Dr. Riley, 

 once U. S. entomologist, estimated the varieties of insects alone 

 at ten millions, which would bring up the sum of all animal species 

 to fifteen millions. There remain, therefore, between nine million 

 and fourteen million species still nameless — enough to furnish occu- 

 pation for a long time to those who like that sort of thing. The 

 real question, the main question now, is, What is the place of 

 this species in the econom}^ of nature? Is it injurious to the in- 

 terests of man? If not, can we turn it to account in any way? 

 The number of animals utilized by man is small, ridiculously small, 

 it would seem. Shaler says that we use only 100 animals and 1,000 

 plants out of millions of species. Only twelve insects, he tells us, 

 are used directly by man, and only two of these, the bee and the 

 silk worm, can be called domesticated. America, the scene of so 

 many of the latest triumphs of economic zoology, has added only 

 one animal "of definite use to man over a wide field,''" to the list 

 of domestic animals; and that is the turkey, which, by the way, 

 became domesticated in Europe and was brought back again to its 

 old home. These are the statements made by Shaler, It is true 

 that we are now domesticating the buffalo, but with rather doubtful 

 success. Peter Kalm, who visited this country in 1750, speaks 

 of seeing domestic buffalo here. The early settlers of this country 

 had their schemes for domesticating the moose, but they never 

 accomplished the work. Other continents, also, have their unim- 

 proved opportunities. In Africa the breeding of zebroids, crosses 

 between horses and the native zebras, promises to revolutionize the 

 horse question. The bare possibility of originating on African soil 

 a hybrid that shall compete successfully with the imported Ameri- 

 can mule, sheds great hope on the life of a South African, what- 



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