, and that thus the final destruction of an already
decadent animal may be brought about. It would now be a matter of
extreme interest to ascertain whether the few dwindled herds of bison
in North America are infected by trypanosomes, and no doubt we shall
soon receive reports on the subject.

A most interesting branch of this subject of the unthinking
extermination of great animals by man is that of the extermination of
whales. Man is worrying them out of existence. Some are already beyond
saving. It would be interesting to know whether there are trypanosomes
or other blood-parasites in whales. I suppose that no one has an
ill-feeling towards whales. Most of us have never seen a whale, either
alive or in the flesh--only a skeleton. I have seen a live whale or
two off the coast of Norway; and I once, in conjunction with my friend
Moseley, when we were students at Oxford, cut up one, 18 ft. long,
which had been exhibited for three weeks during the summer in a tent
on the shores of the Bristol Channel, where we purchased it. The
skeleton of that whale is now in the museum at Oxford, but happily the
smell of it exists only in my memory. The late Mr. Gould, who produced
such beautifully illustrated books on birds, told me that he once fell
into the heart of a full-sized whale, which he was cutting up. He
narrowly escaped drowning in the blood. The whale was not very fresh,
and Mr. Gould was unapproachable for a week.

An immense number of whales are killed every year for their oil, and
their highly nutritious flesh is wasted. There was an attempt some
years ago to make meat extract from it. Some which was brought to me
reminded me of the whale on the shores of the Bristol Channel. I do
not know if the extract has proved palatable to other people. The
Norwegians are specially expert in killing whales. They have been
allowed to set up "factories" on the west coast of Ireland and in the
Shetlands, where they kill whales with harpoons fired from guns, cut
them up, and boil down the fat.

Whales are warm-blooded creatures which suckle their young, and have
been developed in past geological times from land animals--the
primitive carnivora--which were also the ancestors of dogs, bears,
seals and cats. Whales have lost the hind limbs altogether and
developed the forelegs into fingerless flippers, whilst the tail is
provided with "flukes" like the fins of a fish's tail in shape, but
horizontal instead of vertical. The whole form