 CHAPTER 18 THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AFRICAN GAME Thanks to the diligence with which sportsmen and field naturalists have recorded their observations in the haunts of big game, it is not at all difficult to forecast the immediate future of the big game of the world. We may safely assume that all lands well suited to agriculture, mining, and grazing will become populated by rifle-bearing men, with the usual result of the wild mammals and birds. At the same time the game of the open mountains everywhere is thinly distributed and easily exterminated. On the other hand the unconquerable forest jungles of certain portions of the tropics will hold their own, and shelter their four-footed inhabitants for centuries to come. On the open mountains of the world and on the grazing lands most big game is now being killed much faster than it breeds. This is due to the attacks of five times too many hunters, open seasons that are too long, and bag limits that are far too liberal. As an example consider Africa. Viewed in any way it may be taken the bag limit in British East Africa is appallingly high. Notice this astounding array of wild creatures that each hunter may kill under a license costing only two hundred and fifty dollars. Two buffalo, two rhinoceros, two hippopotamus, one eland, two graphy zebra, twenty common zebra, two fringed-eared oryx, two bisa antelope, four waterbuck, one sable antelope, one roan antelope, one greater kudu, four lesser kudu, ten topi, twenty coke hardebeest, two Newman hardebeest, four Jackson hardebeest, six hunters antelope, four Thomas Cobb, two bongo, four pala, two citatunga, three new, twelve Grant gazelle, four Waller's gazelle, ten Harvey's duker, ten Isaac's duker, ten Blue duker, ten Kirk's diktik, ten Gunter's diktik, ten Hein's diktik, ten Cavendish diktik, ten Ebsinian orybe, ten Haggart's orybe, ten Kenya orybe, ten SUNY, ten Clipspringer, ten Ward's reedbuck, ten Chandler's reedbuck, ten Thompson gazelle, ten Peters gazelle, ten Sumering gazelle, ten Bushbuck, ten Haywood Bushbuck. The grand total is a possible 300 large hoofed and horned animals representing 44 species. Add to this all the lions, leopards, cheetahs, cape hunting dogs, and hyenas that the hunter can kill and it will be enough to stock a zoological garden. Quite a number of these species like the sable antelope, kudu, hunter's antelope, bongo, and citatunga are already rare and therefore they are all the more eagerly sought. Into the fine grasslands of British East Africa, suitable for crops and stock-raising, settlers are steadily going. Each one is armed and at once becomes a killer of big game. And all the time the visiting sportsmen are increasing in number, going farther from the Uganda Railway and persistently seeking out the rarest and finest of the game. The buffalo has recovered from the slaughter by Rindherpest only in time to meet the onset of overseas sportsmen. Mr. Arthur Jordan has seen much of the big game of British East Africa and its killing. Him I asked to tell me how long in his opinion the big game of that territory will last outside of the game preserves as it is now being killed. He said, oh, it will last a long time. I think it will last 15 years. 15 years. And this for the richest big game fauna of any one spot in the whole world, which nature has been several million years in developing and placing there. At present, the marvelous herds of big game of British East Africa and Uganda constitute the grandest zoological spectacle that the world ever has seen in historic times. For such an area, the number of species is incredible. And until they are seen, the thronging masses of individuals are beyond conception. It is easy to say a herd of 3000 zebras, but no mere words can give an adequate impression of the actual army of stripes and bars and hooves, thundering in review over a grassy plain. But the settlers say the zebras must go. They break through our best wire fences, ruin our crops, to spoil us of the fruits of long and toilsome efforts, and much expenditure. We simply cannot live in a country inhabited by herds of wild zebras. And really, their contention is well founded. When it is necessary to choose between wild animals and peaceful agriculture for millions of men, the animals must give way. In those portions of the Great East African Plateau region that are suited to modern agriculture, stretching from Bulahuejo to northern Uganda, the wild herds are doomed to be crowded out by the farmer and the fruit grower. This is the inevitable result of civilization and progress in wild lands. Marauding battalions of zebras, bellicose rhinoceroses, and murderous buffaloes do not fit in with ranches and crops and children going to school. Except in the great game preserves, the swamps and the dense jungles, it is certain that the big game of the whole of Eastern Africa is for doomed to disappear, the largest and most valuable species first. 500 years from now when North America is worn out and wasted to a skeleton of what it now is, the Great Plateau region of East Africa between Cape Town and Lake Rudolph will be a mighty empire, teeming with white population. Giraffes and rhinoceroses now are trampling over the sites of the cities and universities of the future. Then the herds of grand game that now make Africa a sportsman's wonderland will exist only in closed territory in books and in memory. From what has befallen in South Africa, we can easily and correctly forecast the future of the big game of British East Africa in Uganda. Less than 50 years ago, Cape Colony, Natal, Zululand, and every country up to the Zambezi, was teeming with herds of big wild animals, just as the Northern provinces now are. As late as 1890, when Rhodesia was taken over by the chartered company, and the capital city of Salisbury was staked out, an American boy in the Pioneer Corps, now Honorable William Harvey Brown of Salisbury, wrote thus of the Guibi Flats near Salisbury. That evening I beheld on those flats a site which probably will never again be seen there to the end of the world. The variety deploying before me was almost incredible. There, within the range of my vision, were groups of Rhone, Sable, and the Seabee Antelopes, Birchel Zebras, now totally extinct, Elans, Reedbucks, Steinbucks, and Ostriches. It was like Africa in the days of Livingstone. As I sat on my horse, viewing with amazement this wonderful panorama of wildlife, I was startled by a herd that came galloping around a small hill just behind me. From on the African frontier, page 114. That was in 1890, and how is it today? Salisbury is a modern city, endorsed by two lines of railway. The Guibi Flats are farms. There is some big game yet in Rhodesia south of the Zambezi, but to find it you must go at least a week's journey from the capital to the remote corners that have not yet been converted into farms or mining settlements. North of the Zambezi, Rhodesia yet contains plenty of big game. The Victoria Falls Station is a popular starting point for hunting expeditions headed northeast and northwest. In the northwest, the game is yet quite a state of nature. Unfortunately, the Baratsi natives of that region can procure from the Portuguese traders all the firearms and ammunition that they can pay for, and by treaty they retain their hunting rights. The final result will be extermination of the game. Elsewhere throughout Rhodesia, the natives are not permitted to have guns and gunpowder, a very wise regulation. In Alaska, our Indians are privileged to kill game all the year round, and they have modern firearms with which to do it. And how is it with the game of that day? The true Birchel Zebra is now regarded as extinct. In Cape Colony and the Tau, that once teamed with big game in the old fashioned African way, they are counting the individual wild animals that remain. Also, they are making game preserves literally everywhere. Now that the best remaining game districts of Africa are rapidly coming under British control, it is a satisfaction to observe that the governing bodies and executive officers are alive to the necessity of preserving the big game from actual extinction. Accepting German East Africa from Uganda to Cape Colony, the game preserves form an almost continuous chain. It is quite impossible to enumerate all of them, but the two in British East Africa are of enormous size and are well stocked with game. South Africa contains a great many smaller preserves and a few specimen herds of big game, but that is about all. Except in a few localities, the hunting of big game in that region is done forever. The Western District's Game and Trout Protective Association of South Africa recently, in 1911, has made careful counts and estimates of the number of individual game animals remaining in Cape Colony with the following result. Big Game in the Cape Province. From information kindly placed at the disposal of the association by the government, it was found that the following varieties of big game are still found in the province. The numbers, however, are only approximate. Blesbach, about 400 in Steinsberg, and 35 in Queenstown Divisions. Bontobock, about 30 in Bredisdorp, and 35 in Swellendam Divisions. Buffalo, about 340 in Utenhaj, 120 in Alexandria, and 75 in Bathurst Divisions. Elephants, about 130 in Alexandria, 160 in Utenhaj, 40 in Bathurst, and 20 in Knysna Divisions. Gemsbach, about 2,450 in Namagualand, 4,500 in Vreberg, 4,000 in Gordonia, and 670 in the Kenhardt, Meph King, and Barkley West Divisions. Kudu, about 10,000 found chiefly in the divisions of Albany, Barkley West, Fort Beaufort, Hay, Herbert, Jansenville, Kuruman, Laddismith, Meph King, Mussel Bay, Utschorn, Riversdale, Stylerville, Utenhaj, Victoria East, and Vreiberg, Oribi, about 120 in the divisions of Albany and Alexandria, Rietbach, about 170 in the Comga Division, Zebra, about 560, most of which are to be found in the divisions of Kraduck, George, and Utschorn. A few are to be found in the divisions of Uniondale and Utenhaj. Springbok. Being migratory it is difficult to estimate their number. In some years they are compelled by drought to invade the province in large numbers. They are then seen as far south as Kalvinia and Frazersburg. Large numbers are, however, fenced in on private estates in various parts of the province. Clipspringers, about 11,200 in the following divisions, namely Namagualand, 6,559, Kuruman, 2,100, Stetlerville, 1,530, Utschorn, 275, Hay, 250, Laddus Smith, 220, Graf Reinet, 119, Kenhart, 66, and Kraduck, 56. Hardabeast, about 9,700, principally in the divisions of Vreiberg, Gurdonia, Kuruman, Maefe King, Kimberly, Hay, and Beauford West. Wildabeast. About 3,450 in Vreiberg, 80 each in Gurdonia and Kuruman, 65 in Maefe King, 20 in Queenstown, and a few in the Bredestorp divisions. Eland, about 12, in the Graf Reinet division, privately bred. The above showing of the pitifully small numbers of the specimens that constitute the remnant of the big game of the Cape suggests just one thing, a universal closed season throughout Cape Colony, and no hunting whatever for 10 years. And yet what do we see? The report from which the above census was taken contains half a column of solid matter in small type, giving a list of the open seasons all over Cape Colony during which killing may be done. So it seems that the spirit of Slaughter is the same in Africa that it is in America, kill as long as there is anything alive to kill. This list is of startling interest because it shows how closely the small remnants of big game are now marked down in South Africa. In view of the success with which Englishmen protect their game when once they have made up their minds to do so, it is fair to expect that the herds now under protection, as listed above, will save their respective species from extinction. It is alarming, however, to note the wide territory covered by the deadly open seasons, and to wonder when the bars really will be put up. Today Machonaland is a very much settled colony. The Cape to Cairo Railway and trains deluxe long ago attained the Pulse of the Zambezi, and now the curator of the Salisbury Museum will have to search diligently in far off Niasaland and beyond the Zambezi River to find enough specimens to fill his cases with representatives of the vanished Rhodesian fauna. Once, in 1892, the white rhinoceros was found in northern Rhodesia, but never again. In Salisbury, Elans and Zebras are nearly as great a curiosity as they are in St. Louis. But for the discovery of white rhinoceroses in the Lado district on the western bank of the Nile below Gondokora, we would now be saying that rhinoceros semis is within about 10 specimens of total extinction. From South Africa as far up as Salisbury in central Rhodesia, at least 99% of the big game has disappeared before the white man's rifle. Let him who doubts this scan the census of wild animals still living in Cape Colony. From all the other regions of Africa that are easily accessible to gunners, the animal life is vigorously being shot out, and no man in his senses will now say that the big game is bringing faster than it is being killed. The reverse is painfully true. Mr. Carl Eichle, in his quest for a really large male elephant for the American Museum, found and looked over a thousand males without finding one that was really fine and typical. All the photographs of elephant herds that were taken by Kermit Roosevelt and Eichle show a striking absence of adult males and of females with long tusks. There were only young males and young females with short small tusks. The answer is the white ivory hunters have killed nearly all the elephants bearing good ivory. The slaughter of big game is going on furiously in British East Africa because the Uganda Railway opens up the entire territory to hunters. Anyone, man or woman who can raise $5,000 in cash can go there and make a huge bag of big game. With a license costing only $250, he can kill enough big game to sink a ship. The bag limit in British East Africa is ruinously extravagant. If the government desires the extermination of the game, such a bag limit surely will promote that end. It is awful to think that for a petty sum any man may buy the right to kill 300 head of hoofed and horned animals of 44 species, not counting the carnivorous animals that may also be killed. That bag limit should immediately be reduced by 75%. As matters stand today in British East Africa, the big game of the country outside the three preserves is absolutely certain to disappear in about one fourth of the time that it took South Africa to accomplish the same result. The reasons are obvious, superior accessibility, more deadly rifles, expert professional guides, and a widespread craze for killing big game. With care and economy, British East Africa should furnish good hunting for two centuries, but as things are going on today, 20 years will see a tremendous change for the worse and a disappearance of game that will literally astonish the natives. German East Africa and Uganda will not exterminate their quotas of big game quite so soon. The absence of railways is a great factor in game existence. The Congo Free State contains game and sporting possibilities on the unexplored uplands between the rivers that are as yet totally unknown to sportsmen at large. We are accustomed to thinking of the whole basin of the Congo as a vast, gloomy, and impenetrable forest. There is today in Africa a vast reserve supply of grand game. It inhabits regions that are either unknown or most difficult to penetrate. As a species in point, consider the okapi. Only the boldest and most persistent explorers ever have set foot in its tangled and miasma quants. It may be 20 years before a living specimen can be brought out. The gorilla and the chimpanzee are so well protected by the density of their jungles that they never can be exterminated, until the natives are permitted to have all the firearms that they desire. When that day arrives, it is good night to all the wildlife that is large enough to eat or to wear. The kwagwa and the blabok became extinct before the world learned that their existence was threatened. The giant eland, the sable antelope, the greater kudu, the bantabok, blessbok, and mountain and virtual zebras. All the giraffes say that of Nigeria, the big water bucks, the nyala, the cititunga, the bongo, and the geronuk, all will go in the same way, everywhere outside the game preserves. The buffalo, zebra, and rhinoceros are especially marked for destruction as annoyances to colonists. You who read of the killing of these species today will read of their total disappearance tomorrow. So long as the hunting of them is permitted, their ultimate disappearance is fixed and certain. It is not the way of rifle shooting English colonists to permit herds of big game to run about, merely to be looked at. Naturally the open plains of Africa and the thin forests of the plateau regions will be the first to lose their big game. In the gloomy fastnesses of the great equatorial forest, and other really dense forests were ever found, the elephants, the derby eland, the bongo, the okapi, the buffaloes of three species, the bush pigs, the bush bucks, and the forest-loving antelopes generally will live for possibly 100 years, or until the natives secure plenty of modern firearms and ammunition. Whenever and wherever savages become supplied with rifles, then it is time to measure each big game animal for its coffin. The elephants of the great equatorial forest westward of the lake region will survive long after the last eastern elephant has bitten the dust. The pygmy elephant of the lower Congo region, Elephus pommelio, will be the last African elephant species to disappear, because it inhabits dense miasmic jungles, its tusks are of the smallest size, and it has the least commercial value. 19 The Present and Future of the Game of Asia After a successful survival of man's influence through two thousand years, at last the big game of India has made a good start on the road to vanishment. Up to 1870 it had held its own, with a tenacity that was astonishing. In 1877 I found the Ganges, Jumna Duab, the Annamali Hills, the Wainayad Forest, and Ceylon, literally teeming with herds of game. The Annamalis in particular were a hunter's paradise, and each day of hunting large game of some kind was a certainty. The Nogiri Hills had been quite well shot out, but in view of the very small area and open golf-links character of the whole top of that wonderful sky plateau, that was no cause for wonderment. In those days no native Shikari owned and operated a gun, or at the very most very few of them did. If a rogue elephant, a man-eating tiger or a nasty leopard, became a public nuisance, it was a case for a Sahib to come and doctor it with a .577 double-barreled express rifle worth $150 or more, and the Sahibs had shooting galore. I think that no such great wildlife sites as those of the plateau regions of Africa ever were seen in southern Asia. Conditions there are different, and usually the game is widely scattered. The Sambar Deer and Munchak of the Dense Forest, the Axis of the Bamboo Glades, the Thamang Deer of the Burmese jungles, the Sladang or Guar of the Awful Melee Tangle, and the big cats and canines will last long and well. The Ibexes, Makkors, Tar, and all the wild sheep eventually will be shot out by sportsmen who are sheep crazy. The sheep and goats of Asia will disappear, soon after the plains animals of Africa, because no big game that lives in the open can much longer endure the modern inexpensive long-range rifles of deadly accuracy and limitless repetition of fire. Eventually I fear that by some unlucky turn of fortune's wheel, all the native hunters of Asia will obtain rifles, and when they do, we will soon see the end of the big game. Even today we find the primitive conditions of 1877 have been greatly changed. In the first place, about every native Shikari, hunter, owns a rifle, at a cost of about $25, and many other natives possess guns and assume to hunt with them. The logical conclusion of this is more hunting and less game. The development of the country has reduced the cover for game. New roads and railways have made the game districts easily accessible, and real sportsmen are now three or four times as numerous as they were in 1877. At Tunaqadavu in the Anamali Hills where 35 years ago, they're modestly nested on the ridge beside the river, only forest ranger Theobalds Bungalow, built of mud and covered with grass, stach, and bamboo rats. There is now a regular hill station lighted by electricity, a modern sanatorium high up on the cliff, a club, golf links, and other modern improvements. In my day there were exactly four guns on the Anamales. Now there are probably 100, and it is easy to guess how much big game remains on the delectable mountains in comparison with the golden days of 1877. I should say that there is now only one game animal for every 25 that there were in my day. I am told that it is like that all over India, beyond question the gun sellers and gun users have been busy there as everywhere else. The game of India is on the Toboggan slide, and the old days of abundance have gone forever. The first fact that strikes us in the face is the impending fate of the great Indian Rhinoceros, an animal as wonderful as the Titanothera or the Megatherium. It is like a gift handed down to us straight out of the Pleistocene age, a million years back. The British paleontologist today marvel at Eliphis Ganesa, and by a great labor dig his bones out of the Swalloch rocks. But what one of them all has yet made a move to save Rhinoceros Indicus from the quick extermination that soon will be his portion, unless he is accorded perpetual and real protection from the assaults of man. Let the mammalologists of the world face this fact. The available cover of the Indian Rhinoceros is alarmingly decreasing, throughout Assam and Bengal where the behemoth of the jungle has a right to live. It is believed that the few remaining Rhinos are being shot much faster than they are breeding, and what will be the effect of this upon an animal that requires 14 years to reach full maturity. Today the most wonderful hoofed mammal of all Asia is booked for extermination, and unless very radical measures for its preservation are at once carried into effect, it is probable that 20 years more will see the last Indian rhino go down to rise no more. One remedy would be a good ample rhinoceros preserve, and another the most absolute and permanent protection for the species all along the line. Halfway measures will not suffice, it is time to ring in a general alarm. During the past 18 years only three specimens of that species have come out of India for the zoological gardens and parks of the world, and I think there are only five in captivity, all told. We are told that in India now the natives are permitted to have about all the firearms they can pay for. Naturally in a country containing over 300 million people, this is a deadly thing. Of course there are shooting regulations, many of them, but their enforcement is so imperfect that it is said that the natives are attacking the big game on all sides with deadly effect. I fear it is utterly impossible for the Indian government to put enough wardens into the field to watch the doings of the grand army of native poachers. Fortunately the Indian native, unlike the western frontiersmen, does not contend that he owns the big game, or that all men are born free and equal. At the same time he means to have his full share of it, to eat and to sell in various forms for cash. Even in India the sale of Game Dragon has reared its head, and is today in need of being scotched with an iron hand. When I received direct from a friend in the native state of Kashmir a long printed circular setting forth the hunting laws and game protective measures of that very interesting principality it gave me a shock. It was disquieting to be thus assured that the big game of Kashmir has disappeared to such an extent that strong protective measures are necessary. It was as if the chief eskimo of Ita had issued a strong proclamation for the saving of the muskocks. In Kashmir the destruction of game has become so serious that a game preservation department has been created with the official staff that such an organization requires. The game laws are printed annually and any variations from them may be made only by the authority of the Maharaja himself. Up to date eight game preserves have been created having a total area of about 300 square miles. In addition to these there are 12 small preserves, each having an area of from 25 to 50 square miles. By their locations these seem to provide for all the species of big game that are found in Kashmir, the ibex, two forms of makor, the tar, Himalayan bighorn sheep, burl, and goral. In our country we have several states that are very large, very diversified in surface, and still inhabited by large game. Has any one of those states created a series of game preserves even halfway comparable with those of Kashmir? I think not. Montana has made a beginning with two preserves, Snow Creek and the Pryor Mountains, but beside these splendid series of Kashmir they are not worthy of serious mention. And then following closely in the wake of that document came a lengthy article in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London by E. C. Stepping, in which a correspondent of the Indian field clearly sets forth the fact that the big game of the Himalayas now is menaced by apparel new to our consideration, but of a most deadly character. Hear him. In this inventory of game destroyers in India, the Gurkha soldier does not find a place, for he belongs to a class which he amply fills by himself, with his small but very important personality. He deserves a separate notice. From the banks of the Sardar on the frontier of Nepal to the banks of the Indus, the battalions of these gallant little men are scattered encantments all along the outer spurs of the Himalayan range. In seven or eight of these locations there are at least fourteen thousand of these disciplined warriors, who, in the absence of opportunities for spilling human blood legitimately, are given a free hand for slaughtering wild animals, along five hundred miles of the best hunting grounds of Upper India. Now, since those facts must be true as reported, do they not in themselves constitute a severe arraignment of the Indian government? Why should that state of game slaughter endure when a single executive order to the CO of each post would effectually stop it? In the making of game preserves or sanctuaries, as they are called out there, the government of India has shown rare and commendable diligence. The total number is too great for enumeration here. The native state of Mysore has seven, and the Nilgiri Hills have sanctuaries aggregating about one hundred thousand acres in area. In the Y. Nayad Forest, my old hunting grounds at Mudamali have been closed to bison shooting because of the alarming decrease in bison, guar, through shooting and disease. The Kundar Forest Reserve has been made a partial game preserve, but the door might as well have been left wide open as so widely ajar. In eastern Bengal and Assam, several game preserves have been created. On the whole, by the diligence and thoroughness with which sanctuaries, as they are termed, have been created quite generally throughout India, it is quite evident that the government and the sportsmen of India have become thoroughly alarmed by the great decrease of the game and the danger of the extermination of species. In the past, India has been the finest and best stock hunting ground of all Asia, quite beyond compare, and the destruction of her once splendid fauna of big game would be a zoological calamity. Tibet. As yet, Tibet offers free hunting without legal let or hindrance to every sportsman who can climb up her lofty, windswept and whizzing cold plateau. The man who hunts the ovus polly, superb creature though it be, pays in full for his trophies. The ibex of the south help out the compensatory damages, but even with that, the list of species available in southern Tibet is painfully small. The Mitchell Taken can be reached from China via Chengqing after a long hard journey over Consul Mason Mitchell's trail, but the Taken is about the only large hoofed game available. The all-time mountains of western China contain the magnificent Siberian Argali, the grandfather of all sheep species, whose horns must be seen to be believed. Through a quest for that species, the Russian military authorities played upon Mr. George L. Harrison and his comrade a very grim and unsportsmanlike joke. At the frontier military post on the Russia-Chinese border, the two Americans were courteously halted, hospitably entertained, and prevented from going into the Argali infested mountains that loomed up before them only a few miles away. The Russian officers said, sheep, why if you really want sheep, we will send out some of our brave soldiers to shoot some for you, but there is no need for you to take the trouble to go after them. After Mr. Harrison and his comrade had spent five thousand dollars and traveled halfway around the world for those sheep, that is in brief the story of how the cup of tantalus was given them by the Russians actually at their goal, as spoil sports those Russian officers were the champions of the world. Seven hundred miles southeastward of the all-time mountains of western China, guarded by the dangerous hostility of savage native tribes, there exists and awaits the scientific explorer, according to report, an undiscovered wild horse. The bi-colored wild horse is black and white, and joy awaits the zoologist or sportsman who sees it first. Evidently it will not be soon exterminated by modern rifles. The Impenetrable Forests Although the mountains of Central Asia will in time be cleared of their big game, when by hook and by crook the natives secure plenty of modern firearms, there are places in the Far East that we know will contain big game forever and a day. Take the Mele Peninsula, Borneo and Sumatra as examples. Mr. C. William Bebe, who recently has visited the Far East, as described how the state of Selangor between Malacca and Penang, has taken on many heirs of improvement since 1878, and sections of Sarawak territory are being cut down and burned for the growing of rubber. Despite this I am trying to think that those developments menace the total volume of the wildlife of those regions but little. I wonder if those tangled, illimitable, ever renewing jungles yet know that their faces have been scratched. White men will never exterminate the big game of the really dense jungles of the eastern tropics, but with enough axes, snares, guns and cartridges, the natives may be able to accomplish it. In Meleana there are some jungles so dense, so tangled with lianas and so thorny with Livestonias and Ratan, that nothing larger than a cat can make way through them. There are thousands of square miles so boggy, so swampy, so dark, gloomy and mosquito-ridden that all men fear them and avoid them, and in them rubber culture must be impossible. In those silent places the guar, the rhino, the Melea sambar, the clouded leopard, and the orangutan surely are measurably safe from the game bags and market gunners of the shooting world. It is good to think that there is an equatorial belt of jungle clear around the world, in Central and South America, as well as in the Old World, in which there will be little extermination in our day, except of birds for the feather market. But the open plains, open mountains and open forests of Asia and Australia are in different case. Eventually they will be shot out. China, also Yunnan and western Mongolia is now horribly barren of wildlife. Can it ever be brought back? We think it cannot. The millions of population are too many, and except in the great forest tracks the spread of modern firearms will make an end of the game. Already the pheasants are being swept out of China for the London market, and extinction is staring several species in the face. On the whole, the pheasants of the Old World are being hit hard by the rubber-planting craze. Mr. Beebe declares that owing to their inrush of aggressive capital, the haunts of many species of pheasants are being denuded of all their natural cover, and some mountain species that are limited to small areas are practically certain to be exterminated at an early date. Destruction of Animals for Fur In the far north, only the interior of Kamchatka seems to be safe from the iron heel of the skin hunter. A glance at the list of fur sold in London last year reveals one or two things that are disquieting. The total catch of furs for the year 1911 is enormous, considering the great scarcity of wildlife on two continents. Incidentally it must be remembered that every trapper carries a gun, and in studying the fur list one needs no help in trying to imagine the havoc wrought with firearms on the edible wildlife of the regions that contributed all that fur. I have been told by trappers that as a class trappers are great killers of game. In order that the reader may know by means of definite figures the extent to which the world is being raked and combed for fur-bearing animals, we append below a statement copied from the Fur News Magazine for November 1912 of the sales of the largest London fur house during the last two years. With varying emotions we call attention to the Wombat of Australia, 3,841, Grebi, 51,261, and Housecat, 92,407. Very nearly all the totals of Lampson and Company, for each species, are much lower for the sales of 1912 than those of 1911. Is this fact significant of a steady decline? End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 of Our Vanishing Wildlife This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Philippa Jevons Our Vanishing Wildlife by William T. Hornaday Chapter 20 The Destruction of Birds in the Far East by C. William Bebe Curator of Birds New York Zoological Park Footnote The observations which furnished this valuable chapter were made by Mr. Bebe in 1911 while conducting an expedition in Southern Asia, Borneo and Java for the purpose of studying in life and nature all the members of the pheasant family inhabiting that region. The results of these studies and collections will shortly appear in a very complete monograph of the Fasianidae WTH. End of Footnote In Chapter 13, treating of the extermination of birds for women's hats, Dr. Hornaday has dealt fully with the feather and plumage traffic after it enters the broker's hands and has proved conclusively that the plumes of egrets are gathered from the freshly killed birds. We may trace the course of the plumes and feathers backward through the tightly packed bales and boxes in the holds of the vessels to the ports of the savage lands whence they were shipped. Then to the skillful dark hands of Mexican peon, Venezuelan Indian, African Negro or Asiatic Chinaman or Malay who stripped the skin from the flesh. And finally to the jungle or mountainside or terai where the bird gave up its life to blowpipe, crossbow, blunderbuss or carefully set snare. In various trips to Mexico, Venezuela and other countries in the tropics of the New World, I have seen many such scenes, but not until I had completed a 17-month expedition in search of pheasants through some 20 wild countries of Asia and the East Indies did I realise the havoc which is being wrought week by week everywhere on the globe. While we were absent even these few months from the great centres of civilisation, tremendous advances had been made in airships and the thousand and one other modern phases of human development, but evolution in the world of nature as we observed it was only destructive, a worldwide catabolism, a retrogression often discernible from month to month. We could scarcely repeat the trip and make the same observations upon pheasants so rapidly as this group of birds approaching extinction. The causes of this destruction of wildlife are many and diverse and resemble one another only in that they all emanate from mankind. To the casual traveller the shooting and trapping of birds for millinery purposes at first seems to hold an insignificant place among the causes, but this is only because in many of the larger ports the protective laws are more or less operative and the occupation of the plume hunter is carried on in secret ways. But it is as far reaching and insidious as any and when we add to the actual number of birds slain the compound interest of eggs grown cold of young birds perishing slowly from hunger of the thousands upon thousands of birds which fall wounded or dead among the thick tropical jungle foliage and are lost the total is one of ghastly proportions. Not to weaken my argument with too many general statements let me take at once some concrete cases. First that of the Himalayan pheasants and gamebirds In a recent interesting article by E. P. Stepping the past, present and hopeful future of game birds and animals in India is reviewed. Unfortunately however most of the finest creatures in Asia live beyond the border of the British sphere of influence and though within sight are absolutely beyond reach of civilized law. The heart of the Himalayas the haunts of some of the most beautiful birds in the world the tragar pans the blood and impaean pheasants lies within the limits of Nepal a little country which time and time again has bad defiance to British attacks and still maintains its independence. From its northern border Mount Everest looks down from its most exalted of all earthly summits and sees valley after valley depleted of first one bird and then another. I have seen and lived with Nepalese shepherds who have nothing to do month after month but watch their flocks. In the lofty solitudes time hangs heavy on their hands and with true oriental patience they weave loop after loop of yak hair snares and then set them not in dozens or scores but in hundreds and thousands up and down the valleys. In one locality seven great valleys had been completely cleared of pheasants only a single pair of tragar pans remaining and from one of these little brown men I took 200 nooses which had been prepared for these lone survivors. In these cases the birds were either cooked and eaten at once or sold to some passing shepherd or lama for a few anas but in other parts of this unknown land systematic collecting of skins goes on for bale after bale of impaean and red argous tragar pan pheasants skins goes down to the Kolkata wharves where its infamous contents though known are safe from seizure under the Nepal Rajas seal. Thus it is that the London feather sails still list these among the most splendid of all living birds and shame upon shame when we read of 80 impaean skins dull or slightly defective we know that these are female birds then if ever we realize that the time of the bird and the beast is passing the acme of evolution for these wonderful beings is reached and at most we can preserve only a small fragment of them. To the millinery hunter what the egret is to America and the bird of paradise to New Guinea the impaean pheasant is to India the most coveted of all plumages. There is a great tendency to blame the native hunter for the decrease of this and other pheasants and from what I've personally seen in many parts of the Himalayas there is no question that the garbolis and nepalese hillmen have wrought havoc among the birds but these men are by no means the sole cause. As long ago as 1879 we read that the great demand for the brilliant skins of the moon owl that has existed for many years has led to the almost total extermination in some parts of the hills as the native shikaris shoot and snare for the pot as well as for skins and kill as many females as males. On the other hand though for nearly 30 years my friend Mr Wilson has yearly sent home from 1000 to 1500 skins of this species and the tragarpan there are still in the woods when they were obtained as many as if not more than when he first ended them simply because he has rigidly preserved females and nests and as amongst English pheasants one cock suffices for several hens. Ignoring the uncertainty of the last statement it is rather absurd to think of a single man preserving females and nests in the Himalayas from 1850 to 1880 when the British government despite most efficient laws and worthy efforts is unable to protect the birds of these wild regions today. The statement that after 30 to 45 000 cock impains were shot or snared as many or more than the original quota remained could only emanate from the mind of a professional feather hunter and Hume should not be blamed for more than the mere repetition of such figures. Let it be said to the credit of Wilson the slaughterer of something near 45 000 impains that he was a careful observer of the bird's habits and has given us an excellent account somewhat coloured by natives but on the whole the best we've had in the past. But it is not pleasant to read of his waiting until twenty or thirty have got up and alighted in the surrounding trees and have then walked up to the different trees and fired at those I wish to procure without alarming the rest only those very close to the one fired at being disturbed at each report. Hume's opinion that in 1879 there was scores of places where one might secure from 10 to 18 birds in a day is certainly not true today. Indeed as early as 1858 we read that this splendid bird once so abundant on the western Himalayas is now far from being so in consequence of the numbers killed by sportsmen on account of its beauty. Whole tracts of mountain forest once frequented by the moon owl are now almost without a single specimen. The same author goes on naively to tell the reader that among the most pleasant reminiscences of bygone days is a period of eleven days spent by the author and a friend on the Chur mountain near Simir when among other trophies were numbered sixty-eight moon owl pheasants etc. For some unaccountable reason there is or was for many years a very prevalent idea that the enormous number of skins which have poured into the London market were from birds bred in the vicinity of Calcutta. When we remember the intense heat of that low-lying city and learn from the records of the Calcutta zoological garden that impaeans and tragopans are even shorter lived than in Europe the absurdity of the idea is apparent. In spite of numberless inquiries throughout India I fail to learn of a single captive young bird ever hatched and reared even in the high cool hill stations. The commercial value of an impaean skin has varied from five dollars to twenty dollars according to the number received annually. In 1876 an estimate placed the monthly average of impaeans received in London at from two to eight hundred. In such a case as Nepal direct protective laws are of no avail. All humane arguments are useless but if the markets at the other end can be closed the slaughter will cease instantly and automatically. As a contrast to the millinery hunter of 50 years ago it is refreshing to find that at last sincere efforts are being made in British possessions to stop this traffic. I happened to be at Rangoon when six large bales of pheasant skins were seized by the custom officials. A Chinaman had brought them from Yunnan via Barmo and was preparing to ship them as docks feathers. Two of the bales were opened for my inspection. The first contained about five hundred Lady Amherst pheasant skins falling to pieces and lacking heads and legs. The second held over four hundred silver pheasants in almost perfect condition. The chief collector had put the absolutely prohibitive fine of two hundred pounds on them and was waiting for the expiration of the legal number of days before burning the entire lot. They must have represented years of work in decimating the pheasant fauna of western China. Far up in the wilderness of northern Burma and over the Yunnan border we often came upon some of the most ingenious examples of native trapping a system which we found repeated in the Malay States, Borneo, China and other parts of the Far East. A low bamboo fence is built directly across the steep valley or series of valleys about halfway from the summit to the lower end and about every 15 feet a narrow opening is left over which a heavy log is suspended. Any creature attempting to make its way through treads upon several small sticks and by doing so springs the trap and the deadfall claims victim. When a country is systematically strong with traps such as these sooner or later all but a pitiful remnant of the smaller mammals, birds and reptiles are certain to be wiped out. Morning after morning I have visited such a runway and found dead along its path what must have been all the walking runny or crawling creatures which the night before had sought the water at the bottom pheasants, cobras, mouse deer, rodents, civets and members of many other groups. In some countries nooses instead of deadfalls guard the openings but the result is equally deadly. I have described this method of trapping because of its future importance in the destruction of wildlife in the Far East. The Chinaman in all his many millions is undergoing a remarkably swift and radical evolution both of character and dress. In many ways if only from the viewpoint of the patient thrifty storekeeper he is the most powerful factor in the East and is becoming more so. In many cases he imitates the white nations by cutting off his coo and altering his dress. In some mysterious correlated way his diet seems simultaneously affected and while for untold generations rice and fish has satisfied all his gastronomic desires a new craving that for meat has come to him. The result is apparent in many parts of the East. The Chinaman is willing and able to pay for meat and the native finds a new market for the creatures about him. Again and again when I wished a few specimens of some certain pheasant I had but to hail passing canoes and bid a few anas or cash or ringgits higher than the prospective Chinese purchaser would give and the pheasants were mine. In the catalogs of the broker's sales of feathers we read of many thousands of the wonderful oscillated wing feathers of the Argus pheasant but no less horrible is the sight of a canoe crammed with the bedraggled bodies of these magnificent birds on their way to some Chinese hamlet where they would be sold for a pittance the flesh eaten to the last tendon and the feathers given to the children and puppies to play with. The newly aroused appetite of the Mongolian will soon be an important factor in the extermination of animals and birds few species being exempt for the Chinaman lives up to his reputation and is not squeamish as to the nature of his meat. Before we leave the subject of Chinaman let us consider another recent factor in the destruction of wildlife which is at present widely operative in China itself. This is the cold storage warehouse of which six or eight enormous ones have gone up in different parts of the east. To speak in detail only of the one at Hangkau 600 miles up the Yangtze we found it to be the largest structure in the city. Surrounded by a high wall with each entrance and exit guarded by armed Sikhs it seemed like the feudal castle of some medieval baron. Why such secrecy is necessary I could not learn as there are no laws against its business. But so carefully guarded is its premises that until a short time ago even the British consul general of Hangkau had not been allowed to enter. He however at last refused to sign the papers for any more outgoing shipments until he should be allowed to see what was going on within the warehouse. I hoped to be able to look over some of the frozen pheasants for interesting scientific material but of course was not allowed to do so. Although here in the heart of China outside changes are not felt so strongly and the newly acquired meat diet of the border and immigrant Chinese is hardly apparent these warehouses have opened up a new source of revenue which has met with instant response. Thousands and tens of thousands of wild shot or trapped pheasants and other birds are now brought to these establishments by the natives from far and near. The birds are frozen and twice a year shipped on specially refrigerated P&O steamships to England and the continent of Europe where they seem to find a ready sale. Pigs and chickens also figure in the shipments. Now the pheasants have for centuries existed in enormous numbers in the endless rice fields of China without doing any damage to the crops. In fact they could not be present in such numbers without being an important factor in keeping down insect and other enemies of the grain. When their numbers are decimated as they are being at present they must eventually result in a serious upsetting of the balance of nature. Let us hope that in some way this may be avoided and that the present famine deaths of 30,000 or more in some provinces will not be increased many fold. When I started on this search for pheasants I was repeatedly told by old explorers in the east that my task would be very different from theirs of 30 years ago that I would find steamers, railroads and automobiles where formerly there were only canoes and jungle. I indeed found this as reported but while my task was different it was made no easier. Formerly to be sure one had from the start to paddle slowly or push along the trails made by natives or game animals but then the wildlife was encountered at once while I found it always far from the end of the steamers route or the railroads terminal and still to be reached only by the most primitive modes of travel. I cite this to give point to my next great cause of destruction the burning and clearing of vast stretches of country for the planting of rubber trees. The east seems rubber mad and whether the enormous output which will result from the millions of trees set out month after month will be profitable I cannot say. I can think only of the vanishing of the entire fauna and flora of many districts which I have seen as a direct result of this commercial activity. One leaves Port Sweternum on the west coast of Selangor and for the hours run to Kuala Lumpur sees hardly anything but vast radiating lines of spindling rubber trees all underbrush cleared all natives growths vanished from Kuala Lumpur to Kuala Kubu at the very foot of the mountain backbone of the Malay Peninsula the same holds true and where some area appears not under cultivation the climbing fern and of course useless La Lang grass covers every inch of ground. One can hardly imagine a more complete blotting out of the native fauna and flora of any one limited region and ever extending roads for the increasing motor cars are widening the cleared zone mile after mile to the north and south. In this region as we pushed on over the mountains into the wilderness of Pahang we saw little of the actual destruction of the primeval native growth but elsewhere it became a common sight once for many days we studied the wonderful life of a jungle which stretched up to our very camp troops of rollicking wah-wahs or gibbons frequented the forest squirrels to pyres birds and insects in myriads were everywhere during the day great fruit bats flying lemurs owls and other nocturnal creatures made the evenings and nights full of interest and then one day without warning came the sound of an axe and another and another from that moment the songs cries chirps and roars of the jungle were seldom heard from our camp every day we saw new phalanxes of splendid primeval trees fallen or half suspended in their rigging of lianas the leaves withered the flower petals fell and we heard no more the crackling of bamboos in the wild then the pitiful survivors of the destruction were brought to us now a baby flying lemur flung from its hole by the falling of some tree young to pyres nestling birds a few out of the thousands of creatures from insects to mammals which were slain so that a china man or malay might eat a few dollars four or five years hence from a grove of rubber trees i do not say it is wrong man has won out and might is right as since the dawn of creation but to the onlooker to the lover of nature and the animal world it is a terrible a hopeless thing one cannot at present leave the tourist line of travel in the east without at once encountering evidence of the wholesale direct slaughter of wildlife or it's no less certain extermination by the elimination of the haunts and the food plants of the various beasts and birds end of chapter 20 chapter 21 of our vanishing wildlife this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org recording by Roger Maline our vanishing wildlife by William T. Hornaday chapter 21 the savage viewpoint of the gunner the mental attitude of the men who shoot constitutes a deadly factor in the destruction of wildlife and the extermination of species fully 95 percent of the sportsmen gunners and other men and boys who kill game all over the world and in all nations regard game birds and mammals only as things to be killed and eaten and not as creatures worth preserving for their beauty or their interest in mankind this is precisely the viewpoint of the cave man and the savage and it has come down from the man with a club to the man with a gun absolutely unchanged save for one thing the latter sometimes is prompted to save today in order to slaughter tomorrow the above statement of an existing fact may seem harsh and some persons may be startled by it but it is based on an acquaintance with thousands of men who shoot all kinds of game all over the world my critics surely will admit that my opportunities to meet the sportsmen and gunners of the world are and for 35 years have been rather favorable as a matter of fact i think the efforts of the hunters in my personal acquaintance have covered about seven tenths of the hunting grounds of the world if the estimate that i have formed of the average hunter's viewpoint is wrong or even partially so i will be glad to have it proven in order that i may reform my judgment and apologize in working with large bodies of bird shooting sportsmen i have steadily and also painfully been impressed by their intentness on killing and by the fact that they seek to preserve game only to kill it whoever saw a bird shooter rise in a convention and advocate the preservation of any species of game bird on account of its beauty or its aesthetic interest alive i never did and i have sat in many conventions of sportsmen all the talk is of open seasons bag limits and killing rights the man who has the hardy hood to stand up and propose a five-year closed season has a hard row to hoe men rise and say it's all nonsense there's plenty of quail shooting on long island yet throughout the length and breadth of america the ruling passion is to kill as long as anything killable remains the man who will openly advocate the stopping of quail shooting because the quails are of such great value to the farmers or because they are so beautiful and companionable to man receives no sympathy from 90 percent of the bird killing sportsmen the remaining 10 percent think seriously about the matter and favor long closed seasons it is my impression that of the men who shoot it is only among the big game hunters that we find much genuine admiration for game animals or any feeling remotely resembling regard for it the moment that a majority of american gunners concede the fact that game birds are worth preserving for their beauty and their value as living neighbors to man from that moment there is hope for the saving of the remnant that will indeed be the beginning of a new era of a millennium in fact in the preservation of wildlife it will then be easy to enact laws for 10 year closed seasons on whole groups of species think what it would mean for such a closed season to be enacted for all the grouse of the united states all the shore birds of the united states or the wild turkeys were ever found today the great indeed the only opponents of long closed seasons on game birds are the gunners whenever and wherever you introduce a bill to provide such a season you will find that this is true the gun clubs and the downtrodden hunters and anglers protective associations will be quick to go after their representatives and oppose the bill and state senators and assemblymen will think very hard and with strong courage before they deliberately resolve to do their duty regardless of the opposition of a large body of sportsmen men who have votes and to know how to take revenge on lawmakers who deprived them of their right to kill the greatest speech ever made in the mexican congress was uttered by the member who solemnly said i rise to sacrifice ambition to honor unfortunately the men who shoot have become possessed of the idea that they have certain inherent god-given rights to kill game now as a matter of fact a sportsman with a one hundred dollar fox gun in his hands a two hundred dollar dog at his heels and five one hundred dollar bills in his pocket has no more rights to kill a covey of quail and long island than my milkman has to elect that it should be left alone for the pleasure of his children the time has come when the people who don't shoot must do one of two things one they must demonstrate the fact that they have rights in the wild creatures and demand their recognition or two see the killable game all swept off the continent by the army of destruction really it is to me very strange that gunners never care to save game birds on account of their beauty one living bob white on a fence is better than a score in a bloody game bag a live squirrel in a tree is poetry in motion but on the table a squirrel is a rodent that tastes as a rat smells beside the ocean a flock of sandpipers is needed to complete the beautiful picture but on the table a sandpiper is beneath contempt a live deer trotting over a green meadow waving a triangular white flag is a sight to thrill any human ganglion but a deer lying dead unless it has an exceptionally fine head is only so much butcher's meat one of the finest sites i ever saw in montana was a big flock of sage grouse slowly stocking over a grassy flat thinly sprinkled with sage brush it was far more inspiring than any pile of dead birds that i ever saw i remember scores of beautiful game birds that i have seen and not killed but of all the game birds that i have eaten or tried to eat in new york i remember with sincere pleasure only one some of the ancient cold storage candidates i remember for cause as the lawyers say sportsmen and gunners for god's sake elevate your viewpoint of the game of the world get out of the groove in which man has run ever since the days of adam there is something in a game bird over and above its pound of flesh you don't need the meat any longer for you don't know what hunger is saved by reading of it try the field glass and the camera instead of the everlasting gun any fool can take a five dollar gun and kill a bird but it takes a genius to photograph one wild bird and get a good one as hunters the camera men have the best of it one good live bird photograph is more of a trophy and a triumph than a bushel of dead birds the birds and mammals now are literally dying for your help in the making of long closed seasons and in the real stoppage of slaughter can you not hear the call of the wild remnant it is time for the people who don't shoot to call a halt on those who do and if this be treason then let my enemies make the most of it since the above was written i have read in the outdoor world for april 1912 the views of a veteran sportsman and writer mr. emerson huff on the wildlife situation as it seems to him today it is a strong utterance even though it reaches a pessimistic and gloomy conclusion which i do not share all together however it's breadth of view it's general accuracy and its incisiveness entitle it to full hearing the following is only an extract from a lengthy article entitled god's acre emerson huff's view of the situation the truth is nonetheless the truth because it is unpleasant to face there is no well posted sportsman in america no manufacturer of sporting goods in america no man well versed in american outdoor matters who does not know that we are at the evening of the day of open sport in america our old ways have failed all of them have failed the declining fortunes of the best sportsman's journals of america would prove that if proof were asked our sportsmanship has failed our game laws have failed and we know they have failed our game is almost gone and we know it is almost gone america has changed and we know that it has changed although we have not changed with it the old america is done and it is gone and we know that to be the truth the old order passeth and we know that the new order must come soon if it is to work any salvation for our wild game and our life in the open in pursuit of it there are many reasons for this fact these facts perhaps the greatest lies in the steady advance of civilization into the wilderness the usurpation of agriculture for industrial use of many of the ancient breeding and feeding places of the wild game all over the west and now all over canada the plow advances that one engine which cannot be gained said which never turns a backward furrow another great agency is the rapid perfection of transportation all over the world take the late influx of east african literature if there really were not access to that country we would not have this literature would not have so many pictures from that country and if even africa will soon be overrun if even africa soon will be shot out what hope is there for the game of the holy accessible north american continent it is all too easy now for the slaughterer to get to his work all too easy for him to transport the fruits of the slaughter at the hands of the ignorant the unscrupulous and the unsparing our game has steadily disappeared until it is almost gone we have handled it in a holy greedy unscrupulous and selfish fashion this has been our policy as a nation if there is to be success for any plan to remedy this it must come from a few large-minded men able to think and plan and able to do more than that to follow their plans with deeds i have seen the whole story of modern american sportsmanship so-called it has been class legislation and organized selfishness that is what it has been and nothing else i do not blame country legislators game dealers farmers for calling the sportsman of america selfish and thoughtless i do not blame them for saying that the so-called protective measures advanced by sportsmen have been selfish measures and looking to destruction rather than to protection at least that has been their actual result i have no more reverence for a sportsman than for anyone else and no reverence for him at all because he is or calls himself a sportsman he has got to be a man he has got to be a citizen i have seen millions of acres of breeding and feeding grounds pass under the drain and under the plow in my own time so that the passing whisper of the wildfowl's wing has been forgotten there now for many years i have seen a half dozen species of fine game birds become extinct in my own time and lost forever to the american people and you and i have seen one protective society after another languidly organized paying in a languid dollar or so per capita each year and so swiftly passing also to be forgotten we have seen one code and the other of conflicting and holy selfish game laws passed and seen them mocked at and forgotten seen them all fail as we all know we have seen even the nation's power under that arc of the covenant known as the interstate commerce act failed to stop holy the lessening of our wild game so rapidly disappearing for so many reasons we have seen both selfish and unselfish sportsman's journals attempt to solve this problem and fail to do so some of them were great and broad-minded journals their record has not been one of disgrace although it has been one of defeat for some of them really desired success more than they desired dividend these all of them bore their share of a great experiment an experiment in a new land under a new theory of government a theory which says a man should be able to restrain himself and to govern himself only by following their theory through to the end of that experiment could they know that it was to fail in one of its most vitally interesting and vitally important phases but now as we all know all of these agencies selfish or unselfish have failed to affect the salvation of american wild game not by any scheme device or theory not by any panacea can the old days of america be brought back to us mr. huff's views are entitled to respectful consideration but on one vital point i do not follow it i believe most sincerely in fact i know that it is possible to make a few new laws which in addition to the many many good protective laws we already have will bring back the game just as fast and as far as man settlements towns railroads mines and schemes in general ever can permit it to come back if the american people as a whole elect that our wildlife shall be saved and to a reasonable extent brought back then by the eternal it will be saved and brought back the road lies straight before us and the going is easy if the mass makes up its mind to act but on one vital point mr. huff is right the sportsman alone never will save the game the people who do not kill must act independently end of chapter 21 recording by roger maline chapter 22 of our vanishing wildlife this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by sarah jennings our vanishing wildlife by william t hornaday chapter 22 our annual losses by insects quote you take my life when you do take the means whereby i live end quote in no country in the world says mr c l marlatt of the u.s. department of agriculture do insects impose a heavier tax on farm products than in the united states these attacks are based on an enormous and varied annual output of cereals and fruits and a great variety and number of trees for every vegetable eating insect native and foreign we seem to have crops trees and plant food galore and their ravages rob the market basket and the dinner pail in 1912 there were riots in the streets of new york over the high cost of food in 1903 this state of fact was made the subject of a special inquiry by the department of agriculture and in the yearbook for 1904 the reader will find on page 461 an article entitled the annual loss occasioned by destructive insects in the united states the article is not of the sensational type it was not written in an alarmist spirit but from beginning to end it is a calm cold-blooded analysis of existing facts and the conclusions that fairly may be drawn from them the opinions of several experts have been considered and quoted and often their independent figures are stated with the disappearance of our birds generally and especially the slaughter of song and other insect eating birds both in the south and north the destruction of the national wealth by insects forges to the front as a subject of vital importance the logic of the situation is so simple a child can see it short crops mean higher prices if 10 percent of our vegetable food supply is destroyed by insects as certain as fate we will feel it in the increased cost of living i would like to place mr marlott's report in the hands of every man boy and school teacher in america but i have not at my disposal the means to accomplish such a task i cannot even print it here in full but the vital facts can be stated briefly and in plain figures crops and insects corn the principal insect enemies of corn are the chinch bug corn root worm diabrotica longi cornus billbug wire worm bull worm or earworm cutworm army worm stalk worm grasshopper and plant lice in all a total of about 50 important species several of these pests work secretly at husking time the wretched ear worm that ruins the terminal corridor fifth of an immense number of years is painfully in evidence the root worms work insidiously and the moles and shrews are supposed to attack them and destroy them the corn root worm is charged with causing an annual loss of two percent of the corn crop or 20 million dollars the chinch bug another two percent the bowl or earworm two percent more the remaining insect pests are charged with two percent which makes eight percent in all or a total of eighty million dollars lost each year to the american farmer through the ravages of insects this is not evenly distributed but some areas suffer more than others wheat of all our cereal crops wheat is the one that suffers most from insects there are three insects that cause to the wheat industry an annual loss of about 10 percent the chinch bug is the worst and it is charged with five percent 20 million dollars of the total loss the hessian fly comes next in order and occasionally rolls up enormous losses in the year 1900 that insect caused to indiana and ohio alone the loss of 2 577 000 acres of wheat and the total cost to us of that insect in that year undoubtedly approached a hundred million dollars did that affect the price of wheat or not if not then there is no such thing as a law of supply and demand wheat plant lice form collectively the third insect past destructive to wheat of which it is reported that the annual loss occasioned by wheat plant lice probably does not fall short of two or three percent of the crop hay and forage crops these are attacked by locusts grasshoppers armyworms cutworms webworms small grassworms and leaf hoppers some of these pests are so small and work so insidiously that even the farmers prone to overlook their existence a 10 percent shrinkage from these and other pests in grasses and forage plants is a minimum estimate cotton the great enemies of the cotton planter are the cotton bowl weevil the bowlworm and the leafworm but other insects inflict serious damage in 1904 the loss occasioned by the bowl weevil chiefly in texas was conservatively estimated by an expert mr wd hunter at 20 million dollars the bowlworm of the southwestern cotton states has sometimes caused an annual loss of 12 million dollars or four percent of the crops in states affected before the use of arsenical poisons the leafworm caused an annual loss of from 20 to 30 million dollars but of late years that total has been greatly reduced fruits the insects that reduce our annual fruit crop attack every portion of the tree and its product the woolly aphis attacks the roots of the fruit tree the trunk and limbs are preyed upon by millions of scale insects and borers the leaves are devastated by the all-devouring leafworms canker worms and tent caterpillars while the fruit itself is attacked by the codling moth curculeo and apple maggot to destroy fruit is to take money out of the farmer's pocket and to attack and injure the tree is like undermining his house itself by an annual expenditure of about 8 million 250 thousand dollars in cash for spraying apple trees the destructiveness of the codling moth and curculeo have been greatly reduced but that money is itself a cash loss add to this the 12 million dollars of actual shrinkage in the apple crop and the total annual loss to our apple growers due to codling moth and curculeo is about 20 million dollars in the high price of apples a part of this loss falls upon the consumer in 1889 professor forbes calculated that the annual loss to the fruit growers of Illinois from insect ravages was two million three hundred seventy five thousand dollars in 1892 insects caused to Nebraska apple growers a loss computed at two million dollars and in 1897 new york farmers lost two million five hundred thousand from that cause in many sections of the pacific northwest the loss was from 50 to 75 percent forests the annual loss is occasioned by insect pests to forests and forest products in the united states have been estimated by doctor ad hopkins special agent in charge of forest insect investigations at not less than a hundred million dollars it covers both loss from insect damages to standing timber and to the crude and manufactured forest products the annual loss to growing timber is conservatively placed at 70 million dollars there are other insect damages that we will not pause to enumerate here they relate to cattle horses sheep and stored grain products of many kinds even cured tobacco has its pest a minute insect known as the cigarette beetle now widespread in america and frequently the cause of very heavy losses the millions of the insect world are upon us their cost to us has been summed up by mr marlatt in the table that appears below annual values of farm products and losses chargeable to insect pests official report in the yearbook of the department of agriculture in 1904 cereals percentage of loss 10 percent amount of loss 200 million dollars hay 10 percent 53 million dollars cotton 10 percent 60 million dollars tobacco 10 percent five million three hundred thousand truck crops 20 percent 53 million dollars sugars 10 percent five million dollars fruits 20 percent 27 million dollars farm forests 10 percent 11 million dollars miscellaneous crops five million eight hundred thousand animal products 10 percent 175 million dollars natural forests and forest products 100 million dollars products and storage 100 million dollars grand total 795 million 100 thousand dollars the millions of the insect world are upon us the birds fight them for us and when the birds are numerous and have nestlings to feed the number of insects they consume is enormous they require absolutely nothing at our hands save the privilege of being let alone while they work for us in fighting the insects our only allies in nature are the songbirds woodpeckers shorebirds swallows and martins certain hawks mules shrews bats and a few other living creatures all these wage war at their own expense the farmers might just as well lose 8 million 250 thousand dollars through a short apple crop as to pay out that some in labor and materials and spraying operations and yet fools that we are we go on slaughtering our friends and allowing others to slaughter them under the same brand of fatuous folly that leads the people of italy to build anew on the smoking sides of vizuvius after a dozen generations have been swept away by fire and ashes in the next chapter we will consider the work of our friends the birds end of chapter 22