to art, but blind to some things greater than art,
who will set me down as a Philistine for saying so.
And, above all others, we should protect and hold
sacred those types, Nature’s masterpieces, which
are first singled out for destruction on account of
their size, or splendour, or rarity, and that false
detestable glory which is accorded to their most successful
slayers. In ancient times the spirit of life
shone brightest in these; and when others that shared
the earth with them were taken by death they were
left, being more worthy of perpetuation. Like
immortal flowers they have drifted down to us on the
ocean of time, and their strangeness and beauty bring
to our imaginations a dream and a picture of that
unknown world, immeasurably far removed, where man
was not: and when they perish, something of gladness
goes out from nature, and the sunshine loses something
of its brightness. Nor does their loss affect
us and our times only. The species now being
exterminated, not only in South America but everywhere
on the globe, are, so far as we know, untouched by
decadence. They are links in a chain, and branches
on the tree of life, with their roots in a past inconceivably
remote; and but for our action they would continue
to flourish, reaching outward to an equally distant
future, blossoming into higher and more beautiful
forms, and gladdening innumerable generations of our
descendants. But we think nothing of all this:
we must give full scope to our passion for taking
life, though by so doing we “ruin the great
work of time;” not in the sense in which the
poet used those words, but in one truer, and wider,
and infinitely sadder. Only when this sporting
rage has spent itself, when there are no longer any
animals of the larger kinds remaining, the loss we
are now inflicting on this our heritage, in which
we have a life-interest only, will be rightly appreciated.
It is hardly to be supposed or hoped that posterity
will feel satisfied with our monographs of extinct
species, and the few crumbling bones and faded feathers,
which may possibly survive half a dozen centuries
in some happily-placed museum. On the contrary,
such dreary mementoes will only serve to remind them
of their loss; and if they remember us at all, it
will only be to hate our memory, and our age—this
enlightened, scientific, humanitarian age, which should
have for a motto “Let us slay all noble and beautiful
things, for tomorrow we die.”
THE PUMA, OB LION OF AMERICA.
The Puma has been singularly unfortunate in its biographers.
Formerly it often happened that writers were led away
by isolated and highly exaggerated incidents to attribute
very shining qualities to their favourite animals;
the lion of the Old World thus came to be regarded
as brave and I magnanimous above all beasts of the
field—the Bayard of the four-footed kind,
a reputation which these prosaic and sceptical times
