The Penn's Grove record., 1893-10-06
DETERMINATION OF SPECIES.
Civilization and Professions Hunters De-
stroying Many Kinds or Animals.

stroyinE Many Kinds of Animals.
The determination of species Is a
subject which has great and growing
interest for many people. The wild
places of the earth have been losing
sadly in romance of late. Look at
North America. No doubt the buff
faloes. or rather the bison, were In
evitably doomed when civilization be-
gan to stretch across the continent,
admits the Saturday Review. But
the destruction of those countless
herds that used to range from the
Saskatchewan to the Rio del Norte,
destroying everything In their course,
like the Jennings or the l~ocusts, was
something wholly unexpected. The
bull bison, like the war horse Of job,
seemed the very image Of strength
and ferocity; ard the RED men, with
their lances and puny bows, though
they did fill the larders of their
lodges with the jerked meat, scarcely
troubled the droves more than the
mosquitoes or the sandfies. Yet,
thanks to firearms and the prices OF
buffalo robes in the American mar
kets, the only traces that are left OF
the buffalo 10 are the bones and
skulls that still whiten the prairies,
and the remains of their 'wallows"
and fayorite fording places.
Many Of the ~fur-bearing animals
are going the same way, or are being
driven back to the inhospitable re-
gions, where the hardy pine trees are
dwarfed by the Arctic cold: and the
once famous fur company OF Hudson
Bay Is reduced to eking out its divi-
dends by land sales. The seals, as
Nansen told us 10 his recent volumes,
which used to swarm on the almost
accessible coasts OF east Greenland,
are leaving the Arctic ice-floes for the
inland ice, and tbither they are al
ready being followed up in specially
constructed steamers Should the
seals be ever thinned down toward
the vanishing point, the polar bears
to say nothing Of the rowing Esqui-
maux, will necessarily be starved out
of existence. One subarcUic resident
has disappeared already, In the shape
of the great aux; the last of the race
is supposed to have been seer off Ice
land about the beginning of the CEN
fury; the biologists pay questionable
tribute TO the memor, OF the mighty
departed by offering fabulous prices
for even a cracked eggshell.
The changes in Africa have been
even more general since tourists, COM
mercial adventurers and enthusiastic
explorers have taken to traversing it
In all directions. The dominions Of
the truculent potentate Moselekatse,
where CORVALLIS Harris found a per-
feet paradise of spirit, are now given
over to the gold seekers of the Trans
vaal, and the quiet pools in the
limuid streams Of the LimpOpo, where
the "mighty hippopotamus wallowed
at will" are troubled now by the
rocking of the gold cradles. The ele-
phant, who Is as shy and modest as
as he is bulky, has been driven north
ward beyond the Zambesi, mile by
mile, before the deadly inroads of
professional hunters, till he is headed
back by the Portuguese and theArabs
from Mozambique and Zanzibar, or
gets entangled among the missionary
settlements on the Shire and Lake
Nyassa. His confreres on the upper
Nile and its Abyssinian tributaries
have Jared little better; and were Sir
Samuel Baker to revisit his old forest
lodge on the precipitous banks OF tho
Atbara he could no longer enjoy from
the windows OF his morning-room the
delectable spectacle OF the daily par
ade Of stately tuskers and graceful
camelopards: The greed Of the Ivory
dealers and ivory hunters has been
killing the geese that laid the golden
eggs, we shall soon have to put up
with vegetable substitutes for the
handles of dinner-knives and the
backs Of our hair brushes.