Our Vanishing Wild Life eBook

William Temple Hornaday
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 632 pages of information about Our Vanishing Wild Life.

Our Vanishing Wild Life eBook

William Temple Hornaday
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 632 pages of information about Our Vanishing Wild Life.

The Carnegie Museum at Pittsburgh should be provided by Pittsburgh with sufficient funds that its Director can put a good man into the field of protection, and maintain his activities.  The State of Pennsylvania, and the nation at large, needs such a worker at Pittsburgh; and this statement is not open to argument!

The California Academy of Sciences;      |
The Chicago Academy of Sciences;         | Appear to have done nothing
The New York Academy of Sciences;        |  noteworthy in promoting
The National Academy of Sciences;        |  the preservation and increase
The Rochester Academy of Sciences;       |  of the wild life of America. 
The Philadelphia Zoological Society;     |
The National Zoological Park;            |

* * * * *

A FEW OF THE INSTITUTIONS OF LEARNING WHICH SHOULD EACH DEVOTE ONE MAN TO THIS CAUSE.

Columbia University, of New York, has a very large and strong corps of zoological professors in its Department of Biology.  No living organism is too small or too worthless to be studied by high-grade men; but does any man of Columbia ever raise his voice, actively and determinedly, for the preservation of our fauna, or any other fauna?  Columbia should give the services of one man wholly to this cause.

There are men whose zoological ideals soar so high that they can not see the slaughter of wild creatures that is so furiously proceeding on the surface of this blood-stained earth.  We don’t want to hear about the “behavior” of protozoans while our best song birds are being exterminated by negroes and poor whites.

Cornell University should now awaken to the new situation.  All the zoological Neros should not fiddle while Rome burns.  For the sake of consistency, Cornell should devote the services of at least one member of its large and able faculty to the cause of wild-life protection.  Cornell was a pioneer in forestry teaching; and why should she not lead off now in the new field?

Yale University, in Professor James W. Toumey, Director of the School of Forestry, possesses a natural, ready-made protector of wild life.  From forestry to wild life is an easy step.  We hopefully look forward to the development of Professor Toumey into a militant protectionist, fighting for the helpless creatures that must be protected by man or perish!  If Yale is willing to set a new pace for the world’s great universities, she has the Man ready at hand.

The University of Chicago should become the center of a great new protectionist movement which should cover the whole Middle West area, from the plains to Pittsburgh.  This is the inflexible, logical necessity of the hour. Either protect zoology, or else for very shame give up teaching it!

Every higher institution of learning in America now has a duty in this matter.  Times have changed.  Things are not as they were thirty years ago.  To allow a great and valuable wild fauna to be destroyed and wasted is a crime, against both the present and the future.  If we mean to be good citizens we cannot shirk the duty to conserve.  We are trustees of the inheritance of future generations, and we have no right to squander that inheritance.  If we fail of our plain duty, the scorn of future generations surely will be our portion.

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Project Gutenberg
Our Vanishing Wild Life from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.