9 
purposeless flight of the butterfly as it flits from flower to flower — 
resting awhile, then passing to fresh forms of beauty — than by the 
busy bee which plods industriously along, dipping deep into each 
nectar-laden blossom, and extracting tlienco its store of sweets, to be 
treasured up for future use. Such being the case, I do not feel 
competent to address you upon any special branch of science, but 
am compelled to select a wider field ; and it has occurred to me, that 
wo may employ the brief period allotted to us not altogether 
unprolitably, in considering a subject, which to me, at least, is of 
intense interest, viz. : — The extinction of native races, brought 
about in recent times by the advent of civilized man in countries 
and places where he was before unknown. 
The subject is a very largo one, and naturally divides itself into 
two .sections ; first, changes brought about by the direct influence 
of man, that is to say, by his direct personal acts, such as may 
arise in the struggle for existence when a superior race seeks to 
establish itself in the homo of an indigenous inferior, or, the 
extermination of a species by the hunter ; secondly, by the indi- 
rect acts of man, such as bush burnings, the destruction of forests, 
spread of cultivation, or the introduction of rapacious animals 
before unknown, as the Pig, Cat, Ihit, etc., supplemented, it may 
be, by careless and untimely hunting, but not wholly due to that 
cause. As it would bo impossible to do anything like justice to 
the whole subject in the limits of time and space at my disposal, 
I shall confine myself to’tho first section, selecting a few type cases, 
and referring to others less in detail. 
Wherever the foot of civilized man has been planted on the 
earth’s surface, from the polo to the eipiator, there has he carried 
his work of destruction ; and his advent has been the precursor of 
the rapid extinction not only of many of the members of the 
indigenous fauna, but too often even of the weaker races of his 
own species which have barred his progress. I am not alluding to 
the wars of early historic times when conquest signified slavery or 
annihilation, nor to such cruel conquests as that carried on by 
Spain in South America, but will only refer to our own system of 
colonization, which is as just and humane as any such system of 
