140 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
hate to sit down and think that he may be the last of his race, 
and that with his death the tribe or family of which he is a 
member will utterly perish. We have undertaken, in a certain 
sense, the protection of solne of our forest dwellers ; but this is 
not done because we recognize any right of others to live, but 
that we may kill them in such a systematic manner that the 
revenue derivable from them shall be permanent and enlarging. 
This reference is chiefly to moose and deer. In the past few 
years it has become a custom of the press to record every moose 
that falls before the hunter’s rifle, to tell us what a lordly animal 
he was, how noble his proportions, how great the spread and how 
many pronged his horns. I daresay that many of you who read 
of this fine animal’s death are touched with sympathy at his 
fate. It could not be otherwise. He is decoyed by a sound 
which seems to him the wooing of his mate, he comes within 
range of the rifle of his concealed foe, and is usually shot down 
without any opportunity whatever of defending himself against 
his assailant. Practically he has no chance of escape. On 
several occasions hunters have told me that, eager as they were 
to secure a trophy of these moose-hunting expeditions, they felt 
sorry for the life they had taken. A few years ago I met on the 
Tobique river a clergyman, who informed me that he was a pretty 
regular annual visitor to that beautiful stream. “ Last year,” 
he said, “ I shot my first moose, and it will be the last, for I felt 
sorry as soon as it was done. I might as well have shot a cow 
in the open field.” He was not, therefore, of the ministerial 
type described by the New England poet : 
The Parson, too, appeared, an man austere, 
The instinct of whose nature was to kill, 
Whose favorite pastime was to slay the deer 
In summer on some Adirondac hill ; 
E’en now, while walking down the rural lane, 
He lopped the wayside lillies with his cane. 
Of course I must be moderate in my observations, for I 
observe that ladies have taken to the woods as moose hunters; 
recently I read that it was becoming a custom for young married 
people to spend their honeymoon in personally endeavoring to 
