40 THE AMERICAN BISON IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 



upon it, of treating this park as it treats the National Museum — that is, as something 

 not existing for the benefit of the District chiefly, nor properly to be maintained by 

 the taxation of its inhabitants. In any case it is to be known that while the National 

 Park has been of a great deal of incidental use to Washington as an admirable place 

 for health, recreation, and entertainment, accessible to those who can only go on 

 foot, and offering such charm of scenery as no other public park under such condi- 

 tions possesses, yet that one of the principal purposes for which it was founded — the 

 preservation from extinction of the national animal races — has not been considered 

 by Congress. About this the Secretary can express himself no better now than he 

 did in his report for 1890, in which, referring to the history of similar attempts, he 

 said: 



"In the early part of this century a naturalist traveling in Siberia stood by the 

 mutilated body of a mammoth still undecayed, which the melting of the frozen 

 gravel had revealed, and to the skeleton of which large portions of flesh, skin, and 

 hair still clung. The remains were excavated and transported many hundred miles 

 across the frozen waste, and at last reached the Imperial Museum at St. Petersburg, 

 where, through all these years, the mounted skeleton has justly been regarded as 

 the greatest treasure of that magnificent collection. 



"Scientific memoirs, popular books, theological works, poems — in short, a whole 

 literature — has come into existence with this discovery as its text. No other event 

 in all the history of such subjects has excited a greater or more permanent interest 

 outside of purely scientific circles; for the resurrection of this relic of a geologic time 

 in a condition analogous to that in which the bodies of contemporaneous animals 

 are daily seen brings home to the mind of the least curious observer the reality of a 

 long extinct race with a vividness which no fossils or petrifactions of the ordinary 

 sort can possibly equal. « 



" Now, I am assured by most competent naturalists that few, if any, of those not 

 particularly devoted to the study of American animals realize that changes have 

 already occurred or are on the point of taking place in our own characteristic fauna 

 compared with which the disappearance from it of the mammoth was insignificant. 

 That animal was common to all northern lands in its day. The practical domestica- 

 tion of the elephant gives to everyone the opportunity of observing a gigantic creature 

 closely allied to the mammoth, and from which he may gain an approximately cor- 

 rect idea of it. But no such example is at hand in the case of the bison, the prong- 

 horn antelope, the elk, the Rocky Mountain goat, and many more of our vanishing 

 races. 



" The student of even the most modern text-books learns that the characteristic 

 larger animals of the United States are those just mentioned, with the moose, the 

 grizzly bear, the beaver, and if we include marine forms and arctic American animals 

 we may add the northern fur seal, the Pacific walrus, the California sea elephant, 

 the manatee, and still others. 



"With one or two exceptions out of this long list, men now living can remember 

 when each of these animals was reasonably abundant within its natural territory. 

 It is within the bounds of moderation to affirm that, unless Congress places some 

 check on the present rate of destruction, there are men now living who will see the 

 time when the animals enumerated will be practically extinct or exterminated 

 within the limits of the United States. Already the census of some of them can be 

 expressed in three figures. 



"The fate of the bison, or American buffalo, is typical of them all. 4 Whether we 

 consider this noble animal,' says Audubon, 'as an object of the chase or as an article 

 of food for man, it is decidedly the most important of all our American contemporary 

 quadrupeds.' 



"At the middle of the last century this animal pastured in Pennsylvania and Vir- 

 ginia, and even at the close of the century ranged over the whole Mississippi Valley 

 and farther west wherever pasturage was to be found. At the present time a few 

 hundred survivors represent the millions of the last century, and we should not have 

 even these few hundred within our territory had it not been for the wise action of 

 Congress in providing for them a safe home in the Yellowstone Park. 



"Now, for several reasons it has been comparatively easy to trace the decline of 

 the buffalo population. The size of the animal, its preference for open country, the 

 sportsman's interest in it, and its relations to the food supply of the Western Indians, 

 all led to the observation and record of changes; and accordingly I have made special 

 mention of this animal in representing the advantages of a national zoological park 

 where it might be preserved; but this is by no means the only characteristic creature 

 now threatened with speedy extinction. 



"The moose is known to be at the present time a rare animal in the United States, 

 but is in less immediate danger than some others. The elk is vigorously hunted and 



