Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1893-10-11
exTERMINATIoN OF SPECIES.
Civilization and Professional Hunters De
stroyins Many Kinds of Animals.

1
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 buf-
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 lOcusts, was
something wholly unexpected. The
bull bison, like the war horse OF Job,
seemed the very image Of strength
and ferOclty: ard the red men, with
their lances and puny bows, though
they did I'LL the larders Of their
lodges with the jerked meat, scarcely
| troubled the drOveS more than the
mosquitoes or the sandhles. Yet,
J thanks to firearms and the prices of
| buffalo robes in the American mar
| kets, the only traces that are left Of
the buffalo now are the bones and
skulls that still whiten the prairieS
and the remains of their "wallOws"
and favorlte fording places.
| Many Of the fur-bearing animals
are going the same way, or are being
driven back to the inhospitable Te-
gions, where the hardy pine trees are
| dwarfed by the Arctic cold; and the
| ~ g. I'm nf
| Bay is reduced to CLiRG out its uivi-
dends by land sales. The seals, as
Nansen told Us in 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 thither they are al
ready being followed up in specially
CONSTRUCTED steamers Should the
seals be ever thlnned down toward
the vanishing point, the polar bears,
to say nothing Of the rowing ESQui-
mauX, will necessarily be starved out
| Of existence. One subarcJic resident
has disappeared already, in the shape
of the great aux; the last of the race
is supposed to have been seen off Ice
land about the beginning OF the CEN
tury; the biologists pay questionable
Tribute to the memory Of the mighty
departed by Offering fabulous prices
for even cracked eggshell.
The changes in Africa have been
even more general since tourists, COM
mercial adventures and enthusiastic
explorers have taken to traversing it
in all directions The dominions of
the truculent potentate Moselekatse,
where CORVALLIS Harris found per-
feet paradise Of spirit, are now given
over to the gold seekers of the Trans
vaal, and the quiet pools in the
limpid streams Of the Limncn0. where
the 'mightT Ei".nrrtamUS w l.luwcd
| at will" arc troubled now by the
rocking of the gold cradles. The Gle
phant, who is as shy and modest as
| as he is bulky, has been driven HOIth-
ward beyond the ZambeSi, mile hy
mile, before the deadly inrOadS Of
professional hunters, till he is headed
back by the Portuguese and the Arabs
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 the
Atbara he could no longer enjoy from
the windows of his smOrning-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 dinncr-knives and the
backs of our hair-brushes.