DESTRUCTIVENESS OF MAN. 
37 
animals is limited by the cravings of appetite, he unsparingly 
persecutes, even to extirpation, thousands of organic forms 
which he cannot consume.* 
* The terrible destructiveness of man is remarkably exemplified in the 
chase of large mammalia and birds for single products, attended with the 
entire waste of enormous quantities of flesh, and of other parts of the ani¬ 
mal, which are capable of valuable uses. The wild cattle of South America 
are slaughtered by millions for their hides and horns ; the buffalo of North 
America for his skin or his tongue; the elephant, the walrus, and the 
narwhal for their tusks; the cetacea, and some other marine animals, for 
their oil and whalebone ; the ostrich and other large birds, for their 
plumage. Within a few years, sheep have been killed in New England by 
whole flocks, for their pelts and suet alone, the flesh being thrown away; 
and it is even said that the bodies of the same quadrupeds have been used 
in Australia as fuel for limekilns. What a vast amount of human nutri¬ 
ment, of bone, and of other animal products valuable in the arts, is thus 
recklessly squandered! In nearly all these cases, the part which consti¬ 
tutes the motive for this wholesale destruction, and is alone saved, is 
essentially of insignificant value as compared with what is thrown away. 
The horns and hide of an ox are not economically worth a tenth part as 
much as the entire carcass. 
One of the greatest benefits to be expected from the improvements of 
civilization is, that increased facilities of communication will render it pos¬ 
sible to transport to places of consumption much valuable material that is 
now wasted because the price at the nearest market will not pay freight. 
The cattle slaughtered in South America for their hides would feed mil¬ 
lions of the starving population of the Old World, if their flesh could be 
economically preserved and transported across the ocean. 
We are beginning to learn a better economy in dealing with the inor¬ 
ganic world. The utilization—or, as the Germans more happily call it, 
the Verwerthung, the leworthing —of waste from metallurgical, chemical, 
and manufacturing establishments, is among the most important results of 
the application of science to industrial purposes. The incidental products 
from the laboratories of manufacturing chemists often become more valua¬ 
ble than those for the preparation of which they were erected. The slags 
from silver refineries, and even from smelting houses of the coarser metals, 
have not unfrequently yielded to a second operator a better 1 eturn than 
the first had derived from dealing with the natural ore; and the saving of 
lead carried off in the smoke of furnaces has, of itself, given a large profit 
on the capital invested in the works. A few years ago, an officer of an 
American mint was charged with embezzling gold committed to him for 
coinage. He insisted, in his detence, that much of the metal was \ola- 
