1885.] Editors Table. 1077 
EDITORS’ TABLE. 
EDITORS; A. S. PACKARD AND E. D. COPE. 
While regard for human life distinguishes the European 
branches of the Aryan race, it can learn a good deal from some 
of the other branches and races in the matter of similar humanity 
to the lower animals. The destruction of harmless reptiles, al- 
most universal among the less educated members of the white 
race, is not practiced by some of the others, notably by the Hin- 
doos, who might be readily excused for wholesale extermination, 
such is the number of venomous species in their country. The 
kindness of this and other races to the wild Mammalia is well 
known. In few countries would be practiced, except by boys and 
Savages, the wanton firing on bison from railroad trains, such as 
was common in this country while that fine animal was still 
abundant. Few civilized people would disgrace themselves as 
some of our English visitors formerly did by shooting scores of 
buffalo which would only walk away from them. It is still a 
favorite pastime for equally thoughtless “ sportsmen” to shoot 
from steamers in Southern waters that last representative of the 
great saurians, the alligator. 
The destruction of animal life for useful purposes is of course 
necessary, but here the greatest folly goes hand in hand with the 
greatest inhumanity. When it is a question of the natural pro- 
ducts of the earth, bison, alligators, and in fact almost all wild 
animals have important economic values, and the intelligent 
€conomist will preserve them on this account alone. But it is the 
Custom, in this country at least, to kill the goose that lays the 
golden egg, and to let the proprietor of sheol take the hindmost. 
Such is the destruction of fishes by dynamite cartridges, a prac- 
tice in which none but an idiot could indulge, and which is for- 
tunately punished by severe penalties. The latest case of wanton 
destruction is the sweeping of our Atlantic coast of surface fishes 
by the nets towed by the steamers of the U. S. Menhaden Oil 
and Guano Association. According to the statistics gathered by 
the investigating committee of the Senate of New Jersey, 450,- 
000,000 of menhaden were captured during the year 1881, and 
350,000,000 during 1882, and so on, and with them an enormous 
number of mackerel, blue-fish, weak-fish, etc. From one of the 
Steamers 70,000 lbs. of food fishes were purchased in thirty days. 
