306 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
races have now reached into the remotest parts of the earth, and have 
become the exterminators. It must now be the work of the most 
intelligent and provident amongst us to arrest this course of destruc- 
tion, and to preserve what remains. 
In Europe, unfortunately, there is little left sufficiently large and 
important to excite the imagination. There is the Huropean bison 
which has been extinct in Western Europe for many centuries, whilst 
the last was killed in East Prussia in 1755. There remains a herd of 
about seven hundred in the forests of Lithuania, strictly protected by 
the Tsar, whilst there are truly wild animals, in considerable numbers, 
in the Caucasus, small captive herds on the private estates of the 
Tsar, the Duke of Pless, and Count Potocki; and a few individuals in 
various Zoological Gardens. There is the beaver, formerly widespread 
in Europe, now one of the rarest of living mammals, and lingering in 
minute numbers in the Rhone, the Danube, in a few Russian rivers, 
and in protected areas in Scandinavia. The wolf and the bear have 
shrunk to the recesses of thick forests and the remotest mountains, 
gluttons to the most barren regions of the north. The chamois 
survives by favour of game-laws and the vast imaccessible areas to 
which it can retreat, but the moufion of Corsica and Sardinia and the 
ibex in Spain are on the verge of extinction. LHvery little creature, 
from the otter, wild cat, and marten, to the curious desman is dis- 
appearing. 
India contains the richest, the most varied, and, from many points 
of view, the most interesting part of the Asiatic fauna. Notwith- 
standing the teeming human population it has supported from time 
immemorial, the extent of its area, its dense forests and jungles, its 
magnificent series of river valleys, mountains, and hills have preserved 
until recent times a fauna rich in individuals and species. The most 
casual glance at the volumes by sportsmen and naturalists written 
forty or fifty years ago reveals the delight and wonder of travel in 
India so comparatively recently as the time when the Association last 
“met in Dundee. Sir H. H. Johnston has borne witness that even in 
1895 a journey “through almost any part of India was of absorbing 
interest to the naturalist.’ All is changed now, and there seems 
little doubt but that the devastation in the wonderful mammalian 
fauna has been wrought chiefly by British military officers and 
civilians, partly directly, and partly by their encouragement of the 
sporting instincts of the Mohammedan population and the native 
regiments, although the clearing of forests and the draining of marsh- 
lands have played an important contributory part. The tiger has no 
chance against the modern rifle. The one-horned rhinoceros has 
been nearly exterminated in Northern India and Assam. The magni- 
ficent gaur, one of the most splendid of living creatures, has been 
almost killed off throughout the limits of its range—Southern India 
and the Malay Peninsula. Bears and wolves, wild dogs and leopards, 
are persecuted remorselessly. Deer and antelope have been reduced to 
numbers that alarm even the most thoughtless sportsmen, and wild 
sheep and goats are being driven to the utmost limits of their range. 
When I speak of the fauna of Africa, I am always being reminded 
