OSBORN AND ANTPIONY — CLOSE OP AGE OF MAMMALS 
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continent of North America, save in the patrolled game preserves, and that he 
was fully convinced that this is true, and the only thing that is questionable 
about it is the number of years that will elapse before this is actually the state of 
affairs. 
Doctor Hornaday believes we must not be discouraged in our efforts to preserve 
the remnants of the once glorious mammalian fauna. It is our duty to fight for it 
as long as we live. The close of the Age of Mammals may be ever so certain, but 
we have a right to hope that somehow and somewhere, in various places, fortune 
will favor our efforts. He said that the fur trade was doing its utmost to destroy 
everything that by any stretch of the imagination can be regarded as fur; that the 
destruction of the life of fur bearers has reached such a state that it is simply 
disgusting, and that there is no animal too mean or malodorous to be used by the 
fur trade. 
Doctor Hornaday concluded by saying that he had far exceeded the time he 
had intended to speak, and that he closed as he began, by expressing his firm 
conviction that Professor Osborn and Mr. Anthony were absolutely right in saying 
that we are at the close of the Age of Mammals. 
Dr. William Diller Matthew, chief of the Division of Geology and Palaeontology 
of the American Museum, who has made a commanding study of the life of animals 
of the past and the natural causes of extinction, was then called upon to discuss 
the paper, and remarked, that, to his mind, the distributional maps that Professor 
Osborn had shown and the statistics that Mr. Anthony had placed before the 
meeting told the story of the disappearance of the great animals very impressively, 
and demonstrated one of the principal causes, at all events, for their disappear- 
ance. He said : do not think that one can fail to be fully convinced from these 
maps and figures. I think, however, that the maps and figures have underesti- 
mated the facts, if anything, as to the former great abundance and variety of 
animal life, and especially of the large animals. It is to be remembered that those 
comparisons are based only upon such types as have been found , There are many 
records of fossils in various parts of the world; but at the same time we are fa 
from having explored any part of the earth’s surface thoroughly. There is no 
country in the world in which, during the last few years, explorers have failed to 
discover many new extinct types that have been wholly unknown; and skulls or 
skeletons of other types that have either been slightly known from small frag- 
ments, or have been regarded as animals having no real existence, merely products 
of the scientist’s imagination or the itch for species making. In half a century from 
now we will look back at our present knov/ledge of the Pleistocene and Pliocene 
life of the world with the same amusement with which /we read in the older text- 
books the large words that cloaked the ignorance of fifty years ago. The plain 
fact is that we know very little, even yet, of the great varied mammalian fauna 
that inhabited the six continents at the end of the Age of Mammals. 
Doctor Hornaday has shown the impending extinction — and extinction that 
seems almost unavoidable— of the pronghorn antelope. It is an animal that for 
various reasons we believe must be a solitary survivor of what was formerly a 
more abundant and varied group of animals. We have had no real evidence of 
that until comparatively recent years. We have at present three extinct relatives 
of the pronghorn antelope recorded. In the course of discovery of the next 
