ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS
(To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sia,—"Under the above heading Mr. Borrett calls attention to the terrible destruction of wild life that is proceeding in every part of the world. Those of us who have compiled life histories of vanished species know that the devastation is even more widespread than his letter indicates, and that the massacre in the fur trade rivals the former horrors of the plume industry. It is the slayer of animals for their skins that is to blame and not the agent of the zoological garden ; the latter traps creatures alive for the subsequent pleasure of thousands who are unable to travel. The Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire has not appeared a moment too soon ; " Can we save the Mammals ? " was actually the title of an able paper that appeared some years back in an American magazine.
The list of creatures that have vanished already from one cause or another is pitedusly long. The classic dodo was the first victim, so completely exterminated- that in Mauritius its very name was unknown to later inquirers, and it was 'looked upon as a myth. About the smile lime 'ent the blue broad-billed ffightless parrot; known only from an old sketch and two mandibles ; also the aphan- apteryx, a quaint reddish bird like a hen with a heron's beak. In South Africa the last of the beautiful bluebuck—the blaauwbok of the Dutch colonists—perished in 1800. The pigeon hollandais—red, white, and blue, like the Dutch flag -'--disappeared in 1826, and the black and white crested starling of Reunion in 1837. The great auk, 'the Pallas cormorant, and the Labrador duck exist only in museums ; the dwarf emu of King Island is a treasured relic in the gallery of the Jardin des Plantes. Reverting to South. Africa, the handsome zebra-like quagga vanished in 1872 and the southern race of the great white rhinoceros is all but shOt out. It is not, of course, suggested that man alone caused this havoc ; the bird fauna of the Mascarene Islands probably suffered from the egg-robbing hordes of monkeys let loose by Portuguese sailors. But the species are gone nevertheless.
The American bison (" miscalled buffalo;" as the natural histories say) is the classical example of successful protection. Reduced to perilously low numbers forty years ago, it has been so successfully restored by the American Bison Society and other bodies in Canada and the States that it has' not only come back, but, as has been well said, it has " come back with a bang." For the fifth time since 1922 the national park at Wainwright, Alberta, has been full to overflowing.
am, Sir, &c., GRAHAM RENSHAW. Sale Bridge" House, Sale, Manchester.
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