Extermination

“ It would be the very wantonness of destruction, to shoot animals not wanted for some specific purpose, unless indeed, you were raging an indiscriminate war of extermination, in a quarter where their numbers were a nuisance and prejudicial to crops. ”

“ The extermination of wild species that now is proceeding throughout the world, is a dreadful thing. It is not only injurious to the economy of the world, but it is a shame and a disgrace to the civilized portion of the human race. ”

“ Instead of a policy of extermination, which has been too often adopted, might there not have been a wise and tempered policy which could only be called into existence by an understanding of the distinctive character of the conquered savages, their capabilities and adaptabilities? If extermination can no longer be tolerated, then the savage peoples must in the march of progress be brought closer to each other. ”

“ Until a war of extermination, as is now proposed, be carried on against these destructive animals, it will be useless to attempt planting, at least on such a scale as should prove beneficial to the inhabitants. It may justly be supposed, that no weak measures could produce so desirable a result ”

“ Man has won out, and might is right, as since the dawn of creation; but to the onlooker, to the lover of nature and the animal world it is a terrible, a hopeless thing.
One cannot at present leave the tourist line of travel in the East without at once encountering evidence of the wholesale direct slaughter of wild life, or its no less certain extermination by the elimination of the haunts and the food plants of the various beasts and birds. ”

“ When we pause and consider the years, the generations and the ages that Nature spends in the production of a high vertebrate species, the preservation of such species from extermination should seriously concern us. As a matter of fact, in modern man's wild chase after wealth and pleasure, it is only one person out of every ten thousand who pauses to regard such causes, unless cornered by some protectionist fanatic, held fast and coerced to listen. ”

“ Here is an inexorable law of Nature, to which there are no exceptions:
No wild species of bird, mammal, reptile or fish can withstand exploitation for commercial purposes.
The men who pursue wild creatures for the money or other value there is in them, never give up. They work at slaughter when other men are enjoying life, or are asleep. If they are persistent, no species on which they fix the Evil Eye escapes extermination at their hands. ”

“ This absence of destructive enemies must be compensated for in some way, and it is accomplished by making vicious inclinations the agents to weed out the redundant growths, and to select for extermination those which are inferior, depraved, weak, and unfit for preservation or reproduction. ”

“ This, with the infliction of heavy penalties for the ruthless destruction of animal life, should secure a fresh lease of existence for the various species whose extermination now appears to be imminent. ”

“ There are vast sections in the populous centres of western civilization where the destruction of species, even to the point of extermination, is fairly inevitable. It is the way of Christian man to destroy all wild life that comes within the sphere of influence of his iron heel. With the exception of the big game, this destruction is largely a temperamental result, peculiar to the highest civilization. ”

“ The mental attitude of the men who shoot constitutes a deadly factor in the destruction of wild life and the extermination of species. Fully ninety-five per cent of the sportsmen, gunners and other men and boys who kill game, all over the world and in all nations, regard game birds and mammals only as things to be killed and eaten, and not as creatures worth preserving for their beauty or their interest to mankind. ”

“ Such a policy, as Renan points out in his beautiful letter to Strauss, “can only lead to zoological wars, wars of extermination, similar to those in which various species of rodents and carnivorous beasts fight for their existence. ”

“ Paris is the great manufacturing center of feather trimming and ornaments, and the French people obstinately refuse to protect the birds from extermination, because their slaughter affords employment to a certain numbers of French factory operatives.
All over the world where they have real estate possessions, the men of England know how to protect game from extermination. The English are good at protecting game—when they decide to set about it. ”

“ They meant the extermination 214of the people by fire and sword, or by famine; for, so long as there was food for the soldiery, the soldiery were to remain; when they left there would be food for no one.
In their despatch to the King in opposition to an accommodation with the rebels, already quoted, the Lords Justices and Council admit the policy of extermination, but only partial extermination, be it observed. ”

“ Wars of extermination, engaged in by people pursuing commerce and all industrial pursuits, are expensive even against the weakest people, and are demoralizing and wicked. ”

“ When your process of extermination begins, let our deaths be as swift and painless as you can conveniently make them. ”

“ When the time for the settlement of the question of partial extermination for the benefit of the race, or total extermination by starvation, can no longer be delayed, they assemble in countless thousands in some of the mountain valleys leading into the plains, and, the vast army of martyrs being selected, they pour across the country in a straight line, a living stream, often exceeding a mile in length, and many yards in breadth, devouring every green thing in their line of march ”

“ What is the result if an animal tries to return to a lower plane of life or refuses to take the next upward step? Generally extermination. The very classification of worms in a number of small isolated groups, which must once have been connected by a host of intermediate forms, is indisputable proof of most terrible extermination. They did not go forward, and the survivors are but an infinitesimal fraction of those which perished. Let us take an illustration where palæontology can help us. The earth was at one time covered with marsupial mammals. ”

“ The war of extermination, as already intimated, begins at the mouth of the river, and with our friend will only cease when he has reached the fountain-head, or the season for trapping comes to an end. The coldest of winds may blow and the woods may be completely blocked with snow, but the trapper has mounted his snow-shoes, and day after day does he revisit and rearrange his traps. ”

“ Still, when all due reservations are made, the fact remains that a war of extermination is being waged daily and necessarily by man against his rivals for possession of the earth, and that though an urban humanitarian and vegetarian who never has occasion to kill anything but a microbe may shudder at the callousness with which a farmer kills rats and rabbits and sparrows and moles and caterpillars and ladybirds and many more charming creatures, yet if he were in the farmer’s place he would have to do exactly the same, or perish. ”

“ The passing from the face of the earth of this, the largest of the native animals of North America, has taken place within the last thirty years and this extermination may be laid at the door of the zealous hunter and trapper who systematically shot and destroyed them in order to obtain the small profit that their skins would bring. ”

“ Extermination has passed over this country, and the river which carries opulent life and nourishment waters a region no less deserted than where the first waters issued from Paradise, when Man, hollowing the horn of an ox, delivered the first rude, harsh cry in the echoless wastes. ”

“ But even when the war is open and declared, as between a raptorial species and its victims, the former is manifestly driven by necessity. And in this case the species preyed on are endowed with peculiar sagacity to escape its persecutions; so that the war is not one of extermination, but, as in a border war, the invader is satisfied with carrying off the weak and unwary stragglers. ”

“ Stop all hunting of mountain sheep, mountain goat and elk. Give the sage grouse and sharp-tail ten-year close seasons, at once, to forestall their extermination. Stop the killing of doves as "game." Stop the killing of female deer, and of bucks with horns less than three inches long. Enact the model law to protect non-game birds. Prohibit the use of machine shot-guns in hunting. ”

“ At the present juncture, this state of the wild-animal mind becomes a factor of great importance in determining what we can do to prevent the extermination of species, and to promote the increase and return of wild life. ”

“ For we far prefer world law, in the age of self-determination, to world war, in the age of mass extermination. ”

“ Looking upon the questions of man's future on the earth in a large way, we see that there are reasons why the animals of the high north, particularly those which obtain their food from the sea, should be protected from extermination. There is a great area of country in that part of the world which is not adapted to the occupation of any of the species which have as yet been domesticated. ”

“ But even more remarkable than the list of birds driven away is the list of those creatures, birds and animals, which have stood their ground in spite of traps, guns, and dogs. Stoats and weasels are always shot when seen, they are frequently trapped, and in every manner hunted to the death and their litters destroyed—the last the most effectual method of extermination. ”

“ As they all live in rather small communities in exposed situations, are not very active, and are rather large and [p. 82] conspicuous, they must be very much exposed to the attacks of insectivorous birds and other creatures; and, having no sting or powerful jaws with which to defend themselves, they would be liable to extermination without some special protection. ”

“ If the savage resists, civilization, with the ten commandments in one hand and the sword in the other, demands his immediate extermination. ”

“ Lists, however, and considerations of the above sort, are a poor substitute for what is really required in such cases—the extermination of pests which are destructive alike to field crops, to trees and shrubs, and to plants, and which offer at best a very scanty return for the havoc they commit. ”

“ It is often said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will put an end to war. That is an error. As the means of extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who hold the state conception of life to submission can be improved to correspond. They may slaughter them by thousands, by millions, they may tear them to pieces, still they will march to war like senseless cattle. Some will want beating to make them move, others will be proud to go if they are allowed to wear a scrap of ribbon or gold lace. ”

“ And if you will follow them into the fields you will find infinite tiny holes that they have drilled and from which they have extracted the lurking enemy of the drops, and you will remember that it is to their beneficial activities that we owe the extermination of the May beetle, whose devastations were so menacing a generation ago. ”

“ The stronger, the more cunning, the better armed, the more courageous tribe or family group, exterminated by actual slaughter or starvation the neighbouring tribes less gifted in one or all of these qualities. But from what we know of the history of warlike exterminating savage tribes at the present day—as, for instance, the Masai of East Africa—it seems unlikely that the method of extermination—that is, of true natural selection—had much effect in man's development after the very earliest period. ”

“ This is the destruction of wild life involved, other than those forms directly slaughtered for pleasure. Sir Harry Johnston has written forcibly of the necessity of insisting on the æsthetic value of wild animals in our landscape, and the desirability of preserving the species that remain, because they are beautiful and intellectually stimulating; [10] and the ordinary Nature lover, not to mention the naturalist, cannot but regard with detestation the ceaseless war of extermination waged by the devotees of “shooting” on so many of our finest and most interesting birds and mammals. ”

“ This extermination will come about because of the fact that the young are left to starve in the nest when the old birds are killed, any other statement made by interested parties to the contrary notwithstanding. ”

“ The number of human victims tends to increase, in spite of the fact that the number of wild beasts and snakes destroyed has doubled in the last ten years, and that the Government reward paid for their extermination has risen proportionately. ”

“ I presume that in some exterminations like those of the rattlesnake and the wolf there is a distinct gain. But it is not well that we should let these exterminations of our animal neighbors go on in sheer heedlessness, but take some pains to preserve and propagate those most valuable. ”

“ The chase, which in early stages of human life was a necessity, has become with advancing civilization not merely a passion but a dilettanteism, and the cruel records of this pastime are among the most discreditable pages in modern literature. It is true that in India and other tropical countries, the number and ferocity of the wild beasts not only justify but command a war of extermination against them, but the indiscriminate slaughter of many quadrupeds which are favorite objects of the chase can urge no such apology. ”

“ Civilization in its full sense—not the advent of a few scattered pioneers—of course, implies their restriction, especially as regards purely grass-feeding species, within certain definite bounds, both as regards numbers and sanctuaries. But this is a very different thing from wholesale destruction, that a few more or less deserving individuals may receive some small pecuniary benefit, or gratify their taste for slaughter to the detriment of everyone else who may come after. ”