elle inhabit the eroded ravines in an agricultural land that averages
1,200 people to the square mile!

We have seen that even in farming country, where mud villages are as
thick as farm houses in Nebraska, wild animals and even hoofed game can
live and hold their own through hundreds of years of close association
with man. The explanation is that the Hindus regard wild animals as
creatures entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and
they are not anxious to shoot every wild animal that shows its head. In
the United States, nearly every game-inhabited community is animated by
a feeling that every wild animal must necessarily be killed as soon as
seen; and this sentiment often leads to disgraceful things. For
instance, in some parts of New England a deer straying into a town is at
once beset by the hue and cry, and it is chased and assaulted until it
is dead, by violent and disgraceful means. New York State, however,
seems to have outgrown that spirit. During the past ten years, at least
a dozen deer in distress have been rescued from the Hudson River, or in
inland towns, or in barnyards in the suburbs of Yonkers and New York,
and carefully cared for until "the zoo people" could be communicated
with. Last winter about 13 exhausted grebes and one loon were picked up,
cared for and finally shipped with tender care to the Zoological Park.
One distressed dovekie was picked up, but failed to survive.

The sentiment for the conservation of wild life has changed the mental
attitude of very many people. The old Chinese-Malay spirit which cries
"Kill! Kill!" and at once runs amuck among suddenly discovered wild
animals, is slowly being replaced by a more humane and intelligent
sentiment. This is one of the hopeful and encouraging signs of the
times.

The destruction of wild animals by natural causes is an interesting
subject, even though painful. We need to know how much destruction is
wrought by influences wholly beyond the control of man, and a few cases
must be cited.

RINDERPEST IN AFRICA.--Probably the greatest slaughter ever wrought upon
wild animals by diseases during historic times, was by rinderpest, a
cattle plague which afflicted Africa in the last decade of the previous
century. Originally, the disease reached Africa by way of Egypt, and
came as an importation from Europe. From Egypt it steadily traveled
southward, reaching Somaliland in 1889. In 1896 it reached the Zambesi
River and entered Rhodesi