y in our institutions of learning--a
legion in themselves; teachers of nature study in our secondary schools;
investigators and specialists in state and government service; the
taxidermists and osteologists; and the array of literary people who,
like all the foregoing, _make their bread and butter out of the
exploitation of wild life_.

Taken as a whole, the people named above constitute a grand army of at
least five thousand trained, educated, resourceful and influential
persons. They all _depend upon wild life for their livelihood_. When
they talk about living things, the public listens with respectful
attention. Their knowledge of the value of wild life would be worth
something to our cause; but thus far it never has been capitalized!

These people are hard workers; and when they mark out definite courses
and attainable goals, they know how to get results. Yet what do we see?

For sixty long years, with the exception of the work of a corporal's
guard of their number, this grand army has remained in camp, partly
neglecting and partly refusing to move upon the works of the enemy. For
sixty years, with the exception of the non-game-bird law, as a class and
a mass they have left to the sportsmen of the country the dictating of
laws for the protection of all the game birds, the mammals and the game
fishes. When we stop to consider that the game birds alone embrace _154
very important species_, the appalling extent to which the zoologist has
abdicated in favor of the sportsman becomes apparent.

It is a very great mistake, and a wrong besides, for the zoologists of
the country to abandon the game birds, mammals and fishes of North
America to the sportsmen, to do with as they please! Yet that is
practically what has been done.

The time was, thirty or forty years ago, when wild life was so abundant
that we did not need to worry about its preservation. That was the
golden era of study and investigation. That era ended definitely in
1884, with the practical extermination of the wild American bison,
partly through the shameful greed and partly through the neglect of the
American people. We are now living _in the middle of the period of
Extermination!_ The questions for every American zoologist and every
sportsman to answer now are: Shall the slaughter of species go on to a
quick end of the period? Shall we give posterity a birdless, gameless,
fishless continent, or not? Shall we have close seasons, all over the
country, f