When we pause and consider the years, the generations and the ages that
Nature spends in the production of a high vertebrate species, the
preservation of such species from extermination should seriously concern
us. As a matter of fact, in modern man's wild chase after wealth and
pleasure, it is only one person out of every ten thousand who pauses to
regard such causes, unless cornered by some protectionist fanatic, held
fast and coerced to listen.

We are not discussing the animals of the Pleistocene, or the Eocene, or
any period of the far-distant Past. We are dealing with species that
have been ruthlessly, needlessly and wickedly destroyed by man during
our own times; species that, had they been given a fair chance, would be
alive and well to-day.

In reckless waste of blood and treasure, the nineteenth century has much
for which to answer. Wars and pillage, fires, earthquakes and volcanoes
are unhappily unavoidable. Like the poor of holy writ, we have them with
us always. But the destruction of animal life is in a totally different
category from the accidental calamities of life. It is deliberate,
cold-blooded, persistent, and in its final stage, _criminal_! Worst of
all, there is no limit to the devilish persistence of the confirmed
destroyer, this side of the total extinction of species. No polar night
is too cold, no desert inferno is too hot for the man who pursues wild
life for commercial purposes. The rhytina has been exterminated in the
far north, the elephant seals on Kerguelen are being exterminated in the
far south, and midway, in the desert mountains of Lower California a
fine species of mountain sheep is rapidly being shot into oblivion.

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