While there are Chapman zebras and Grant zebras in plenty, and of Crawshay’s not a few, all these are forms that have developed northward of the range of the parent species, the original Equus burchelli.  For half a century in South Africa the latter had been harried and driven and shot, and now it is gone, forever.  Now, the museum people of the world are hungrily enumerating their mounted specimens, and live ones cannot be procured with money, because there are none!  Already it is common talk that “the true Burchell zebra is extinct;” and unfortunately there is no good reason to doubt it.  Even if there are a few now living in some remote nook of the Transvaal, or Zululand, or Portuguese East Africa, the chances are as 100 to 1 that they will not be suffered to bring back the species; and so, to Burchell’s zebra, the world is to-day saying “Farewell!”

[Illustration:  THYLACINE OR TASMANIAN WOLF Now Being Exterminated by the Sheep Owners of Tasmania]

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SPECIES OF LARGE MAMMALS ALMOST EXTINCT

THE THYLACINE or TASMANIAN WOLF, (Thylacinus cynocephalus).—­Four years ago, when Mr. W.H.D.  Le Souef, Director of the Melbourne Zoological Garden (Australia), stood before the cage of the living thylacine in the New York Zoological Park, he first expressed surprise at the sight of the animal, then said: 

“I advise you to take excellent care of that specimen; for when it is gone, you never will get another.  The species soon will be extinct.”

This opinion has been supported, quite independently, by a lady who is the highest authority on the present status of that species, Mrs. Mary G. Roberts, of Hobart, Tasmania.  For nearly ten years Mrs. Roberts has been procuring all the living specimens of the thylacine that money could buy, and attempting to breed them at her private zoo.  She states that the mountain home of this animal is now occupied by flocks of sheep, and because of the fact that the “Tasmanian wolves” raid the flocks and kill lambs, the sheep-owners and herders are systematically poisoning the thylacines as fast as possible.  Inasmuch as the species is limited to Tasmania, Mrs. Roberts and others fear that the sheepmen will totally exterminate the remnant at an early date.  This animal is the largest and also the most interesting carnivorous marsupial of Australia, and its untimely end will be a cause for sincere regret.

[Illustration:  WEST INDIAN SEAL In the New York Aquarium]

THE WEST INDIAN SEAL, (Monachus tropicalis).—­For at least fifty years, all the zoologists who ever had heard of this species believed that the oil-hunters had completely exterminated it.  In 1885, when the National Museum came into possession of one poorly-mounted skin, from Professor Poey, of Havana, it was regarded as a great prize.

Most unexpectedly, in 1886 American zoologists were startled by the discovery of a small herd on the Triangle Islands, in the Caribbean Sea, near Yucatan, by Mr. Henry L. Ward, now director of the Milwaukee Public Museum, and Professor Ferrari, of the National Museum of Mexico.  They found about twenty specimens, and collected only a sufficient number to establish the true character of the species.