Extinct Animals

In a late number of Seienee Dr. C. Ilart Merriam closes an article vvhich criticises in a rather destructive way some of the zoological theories of Theodore Koosevelt, with an appeal to museums, sportsmen and naturalists to take advantage of every opportunity before it is too late to secure and preserve specimens of our larger mammals from remote parts of their ranges. Many species have been exterminated in Europe by man, and in this country the process has already begun. The familiar story of the vanishing buffalo is only one of many. The giant grizzly of southern California, the largest earnivorous animal of the United States, is about exterminated, and it is doubtful if a museum specimen will ever be obtained. The large wol ves have been exterminated over more than half the area they formerly possessed, and no one knows what forms have disappeared. An unknown form of elk or wapiti, which within the memory of men still living inhabited the Alleglianies from North Carolina to the Adirondacks, has been wiped off the face of the earth.