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THE HOW AND WHY WONDER BOOK OF

I .

EXTINCT ANIMALS
Written by JOHN BURTON
Illustrated by JOHN BARBER

GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers NEW YORK

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Introduction
Animals are constantly evolving. Just as new
ones appear, so others disappear. Some, like
crocodiles, remain unchanged for millions
of years, while others evolve rapidly. Man
evolved fairly recently, and in the last few
hundred years he has spread out over the
whole world. In doing so, he has killed countless millions of animals,
some for food, some because they were pests, and some for "sport."
Man has also wiped out entire species. Once a species is extinct,
it can never be resurrected, however much we regret its passing.
Fortunately, more and more people are becoming aware of this and
are trying to stop the destruction of wildlife. Societies like the World
Wildlife Fund buy reservations where animals can live in peace. Governments protect animals so that their people can enjoy seeing them;
wild animals are for everyone, not for merely a few hunters.
A few wealthy ladies wearing leopard-skin coats could deprive children living in the year 2000 of the opportunity to see a live leopard. If
we want to continue to see leopards, tigers, pandas, crocodiles, and
other animals, we must make sure that they do not become extinct.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-418

ISBN : 0-448-05072-2 (Wonder Book Edition)
ISBN: 0-448-04062-X (Trade Edition)
ISBN: 0-448-03866-8 (Library Edition)
Published in the United States by
Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., New York, N .Y .

HJ/(j

1'111 NT1Nt;

Originally published in Great Britain

by Transworld Publishers Ltd.
Transworld Edition published 1972.
Copyright 1972 Transworld Publishers Ltd.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States.

CONTENTS
Page

Page
EXTINCT ANIMALS LONG AGO AND
THEIR FOSSIL REMAINS
How do we know about extinct
animals?
What are fossils?
What is geological time?
When fossils were first found, what did
people think they were?
What were dinosaurs?

THE ICE AGE

What was the Ice Age?
What are dragons' teeth and how do
they tell us about the Ice Age?
Have frozen animals even been found?
How do we know which wild animals
cave men hunted?
Did men eat cave bears and other cavedwelling animals?
Which animals have been found in tar
pits?
MAN SPREADS OVER fHE WORLDAND THE ANIMALS DISAPPEAR
What was the most common bird to have
become extinct?
What happened to the great auk?
What does "as dead as a dodo" mean?
Did flightless birds become extinct on
larger islands?
Did large birds live anywhere else in the
world?

4
5
6
6
8

10
11

12
13

14
16

17
19
19
20
21

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22

Why is it that some birds cannot fly?

Why have so many birds become extinct
on the Hawaiian Islands?
Which animal disappeared the fastest?
Have lions ever been found in Europe?
Which horses have become extinct?
Which marsupials have vanished?
What animals became extinct in
Great Britain?

23
24
24
25
26
27

THE EFFORT TO SAVE ANIMALS

What are the causes of animal
extinction?
How many buffalo were there in
America?
What other large animals are in
danger?
Is there any hope that the Arabian oryx
will survive?
Has the whooping crane been saved?
Where is the giant panda found?
How does whaling affect the number
of whales?
Where can tigers still be found in the
wild?
What reptiles and amphibians are
becoming extinct in Britain?
Are heathland birds in danger?
What is Pere David's deer?
Is the human race becoming
extinct?
Has man exterminated other men
anywhere else in the world?

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28
29
31
32
33
34
36
38
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46
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If we think of the world as having been created in seven days, then life as we know it has existed for a brief time. On
the last day of the week life appeared, and just before midnight man appeared .

Extinct Animals Long Ago

and Their Fossil Remains .
Some of the animals that are extinct
now have died out
How do we know
only recently, and
about extinct
so there may be
animals?
photographs and
detailed descriptions of these . animals,
as well as stuffed specimens in museums.
Animals that have become extinct as

recently as this include the quagga (a

relative of the zebra) and the passenger pigeon.
Ancient rock-paintings, such as the
Stone Age paintings in the caves at
Lascaux in France, or Altamira in
Spain, also give a good idea of the animals found 20,000 years ago or more.

.mains continue to decompose slowly,

even after they have become buried.
Sometimes, however, the animal is
buried quickly. This usually happens
in rivers, ponds, marshes, and estuaries,
where the dead animal sinks rapidly
into the oozy mud, and is sealed off
from air and its effects. Sometimes only
impressions of animals are preserved these are also called fossils - but sometimes bones are preserved also.
Fossils are studied by paleontologists (from the Greek palaios, meaning
ancient, and ll!gia, meaning study or
knowledge of). When fossils are found,
they are usually transpo~ted to a museum with much of the surrounding

But most of the extinct animals died out

millions of years ago, long before there
were any people to paint them or write
about them. How, then, do we know
about all these animals? From fossils.
Fossils are the remains of animals and
plants that have
What are fossils?
been preserved in
the ground, often quite .literally "turned
to stone." When an animal dies, its remains are usually eaten by other animals. Even the bones are often crunched
by scavengers such as hyenas. Sometimes, however, bits of the animal, usually the bones, but sometimes the whole
animal, are buried. Normally, the re-

When an animal dies, its bones are sometimes preserved as a fossil.

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rock and often a protective casing of

plaster of Paris. The paleontologist
slowly and carefully removes the fossil
from the casing and rock. He uses many
different tools, such as hammers and
chisels, to remove the larger pieces of
rock; a dentists' drill and acids get the
finer details to stand out.

Pleistocene. History started only about

5,000 years ago, but the Pleistocene
Epoch (the last major geological period) started about three and a half
million years ago. To a paleontologist,
three and a half million years is very
recent, indeed - the fossils he may be
studying from the Triassic Period are
over 220 million years old!

Geological time is the length of time

that the earth has
What is geological b
.
. t
time?
een 1n ex1s ence. Geologists
divide it into periods, or epochs, each of
which us~ally lasted several millions of
years. They are known by names such
as Jurassic, Cretaceous, Eocene, and

When f9ssils were first found, no one

really knew
When fossils were
what they were.
first found, what did
Various ideas
, people think they
were suggested
were?
as to how the
fishes and shells managed to get to the

top of mountains. The most popularly

believed idea was that they were animals that failed to get into Noah's ark,
and were drowned when the flood came.
These creatures were referred to as
antediluvial - that is to say, before
(ante) the flood ( diluvial). Most people believed implicitly in the Bible, and
it was heretical to suggest other ways
that the animals may have arrived at the
tops of mountains. Scientists began
studying the fossils more and more carefully and realized that most of the animals no longer existed - so the idea
was advanced that there had been several creations. The studies continued,
and in 18 31 a young man named

Charles Darwin set off on a round-theworld voyage as the resident naturalist

on HMS Beagle. An extremely acute
observer, he made a collection of fossils
while he was in South America: For
years afterwards, he thought about all
the animals he had seen on his voyage
- both living animals and extinct fossilized animals - and he gradually
worked out one of the most revolutionary theories of the century. In 1859 he
published a book, The Origin of the
Species, in which he explained how species are constantly evolving, with some
becoming extinct. He also concluded
that this took not just a few hundred
years, but millions and millions of years.

Charles Darwin collected many fossils in South America. He noticed that many of them were similar to living animals .

APATOSAURUS~

STEGOSAURUS

During the Cretaceous era, dinosaurs were the dominant inhabitants of the earth.

Dinosaur derived from two Greek

.words: deinos, meaning terrible; and
sauros, meaning reptile or lizard.
It was in the United States, however,
that the greatest finds of dinosaurs were
to be made, precipitating a famous and
bitter feud. The rivals were Othniel
Marsh, professor of paleontology at
Yale University, and Edward Drinker
Cope, from Philadelphia. The famous
"Battle of the Bones" really began in
accused
each
1877. The two scientists
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other of all sorts of things - even of
destroying bones so that the other would
not be able to get any. They were both
very wealthy men when the feud started,
but they both spent enormous fortunes

When the dinosaurs were first discovered, early in the nineWhat were
.
?
teenth century, 1t was
.
d inosaurs.
not realized exactly
what they were. The first one described
was Megalosaurus (which simply means
"big lizard"). It was described by Dean
William Buckland, an eccentric geologist and clergyman who lived in Oxford.
The next dinosaur to be recognized was
I guanodon (iguana-tooth), discovered
by a Sussex doctor and geologist, Gid. eon Mantell. But it was Sir Richard
Owen, superintendent of the Natural
History Department of the British Museum, who, in 1841, coined . the word
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dinosaur to describe these giant reptiles.

MEGALOSAURUS
TR ICERATOPS

PHASCOLOTHERIUM

in their search for dinosaur bones. Between them, they were the discoverers
of many well-known dinosaurs: Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and Camarasaufus.
From the Triassic Period and during
the Cretaceous Period, until about 70
million years ago, dinosaurs were commonplace all over the wrold.
The Cretaceous Period did not suddenly come to an end - there were
changes, but they took hundreds, or
even thousands, of years. Dinosaurs
did not become extinct overnight, but
gradually died out over thousands of
years as vegetation and climate were
altered.

Some animals have survived from the

Age of Reptiles almost unchanged the so-called "living fossils." When an
animal is described as a "living fossil,"
what is really meant is that it has hardly
changed in appearance . from its fossil
ancestors. The tuatara, which is found
in New Zealand, is a good example.
Fossil tuataras have been found in
Jurassic strata that are almost identical to the one still found on small islands near New Zealand. The crocodiles
alive today, as well as the turtles, have
also remained almost unchanged. Many
of the species alive today look like those
that inhabited the earth at the time of
the dinosaurs.

Thousands of years ago, London had an arctic climate. Mammoths, reindeer, and woolly rhinos lived there.

The Ice Age

Geologists divide time into different periods - each of
What was the Ice
which lasts sevAge?
eral millions of
years: The different periods have become famous for particular reasons the Cretaceous Period, for instance, is
often referred to as the Age of Reptiles,
because at that time the giant reptiles,
the dinosaurs, were commonplace. The
most recent period is referred to by
geologists as the Pleistocene, or the Ice
Age, a time when much of Europe was
intermittently covered by sheets of ice.
The climate was quite different during
the periods when the snow and ice cov-

ered North America and parts of Europe - these periods were knpwn as
glacial periods, when the climate was
like that found in Greenland today. But
then there were periods of warmer
weather, known as the interglacial periods, when the climate was similar to
that of East Africa today. These
changes took place over thousands of
years - in fact, geologists do not really
know whether or not the Ice Age has
finished. It is possible that we are living
in one of the warmer interglacial periods, and that in about 10,000 years'
time most of North America will be
covered with snow and ice once more. -

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:>TH

Dragons' teeth were the teeth of extinct

animals found by
What are dragons' the Chinese m
teeth and how do
caves. In 1870
they tell us about
the superintenthe Ice Age?
dent of natural
history at the British Museum, Sir
Richard Owen, wrote an article on the
fossil animals of China, and based it
mainly on specimens that had been
bought in druggists' shops in the Far
East as .charms. The animals included
rhinoceroses, orangutans, giant pandas,
pigs, buffaloes, and even three-toed
horses.

When foundations are dug for new

buildings, fossils are likely to be found.
The fossils found in London show that
it was a very different place in the past.
Fossils have shown that during one
of the glacial, or icy, periods, when
London must have looked like arctic
Scandinavia or Alaska, there were cave
bears, wolves, red deer, woolly mammoths, reindeer, polar bears, and giant
beavers. During one of the warmer
spells, it was more like East Africa of
today. There were bison, hippos, hyenas, cave lions, boar, and straighttusked elephants.

STRAIGHT-TUSKED ELEPHANT

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HYENA

In the warmer periods of the Ice Age animals similar. to those now found in Africa might have been seen in the Thames
River-hippos, cave lions, hyenas, and straight-tusked elephants.

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Frozen mammoth meat, when first found, was so fresh that it was fed to dogs.

Mammoths had long woolly coats that

kept out the cold, but they were such .
large, heavy animals, that if they fell
into a crevice in the ice or frozen
ground, they were unable to climb out
and soon froze to death. Over 100,000
mammoth tusks and many bones have
now been found in the frozen ground.
One of the best preserved mammoths
was found by scientists sent out by the
Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg
(now Leningrad) in 1901. At Beresovka, i~ northern Siberia, they found
a woolly mammoth so well preserved
that it even had the remains of food in
its stomach, and they were able to examine the blood from its veins. The
plants on which it had been feeding
were mainly grasses, but also some buttercups. By u.sing modern ways of de-

Every now and then, the tribesmen

living in Siberia
Have frozen animals
Id fi d
ever been found?
wou
n a
frozen mammoth buried in the ice. They believed
that the mammoths were a kind of giant
mole and that they died when they saw
the light of day. This was because the
mammoth started to decompose as
soon as it began to thaw. The tribesmen
who found the mammoths would sell
the ivory of the tusks and feed the meat
to their dogs. The ivory was sold to
merchants, and eventually some of it
found its way to western Europe. In
1806, an English scientist organized ail
expedition to Siberia and managed to
bring back some bones and some pieces
of skin, which are riow preserved in the
Natural History Museum in' Leningrad.

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termining dates (carbon-14 tests), it was

found that this mammoth died about
44,000 years ago.
Early man probably hunted mammoths, but it is unlikely that he caused
their extinction. Cave paintings and
pieces of ivory with carvings of mammoths on them have been found at several places.
Woolly rhinos have also been found
in the icy wastes of Siberia. Like the
mammoths, they had long shaggy coats
to keep out the cold, but quickly froze
to death when trapped in icy ground.
One of the best preserved woolly
rhinoceroses was found not in ice, but
in a mixture of oil and salts, at Starunia,
in the e.astern Carpathian Mountains of
Poland. Only the hoofs and tusks had
disappeared.

Early men sometimes used caves for

shelter, and ocHow do we know
casionally they
which wild animals .
. t d . t
cave men hunted? , _pam e pie ures
on the walls,
usually of the animals they hu~ted. The
most famous of these caves are the ones
at Lascaux, France, containing pictures
of bison, wild horses, reindeer, mammoths, and wild cattle. None of these
animals live in the area of the caves any
more. Early men also shared their caves
with animals such as cave lions and cave
bears. The story of the extinction of the
cave bear is a very strange one, indeed.
The Ice Age was interrupted by periods of warmer weather, during which
many animals we think of as being typically African lived as far north as Durham, England, including hippos and

Stone Age men painted pictures of the animals that once roamed Europe.

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Primitive man hunted the enormous cave bears . They also collected their skulls.

eases through not having enough exer~

cise and being starved. While sealed in
their caves, they lived on body fat accumulated during the summer.

elephants. It was during these warm

spells - or interglacial periods - that
the cavebear, feeding on abundant fruit
and vegetables, gradually evolved into
a giant of an animal. It sometimes
reached twelve feet and of course it had
hardly any enemies. Hundreds of thousands of years later, the weather gradually became colder again. Snow and ice
once more spread across Europe. The
elephants and hippos moved south or
died out, but the cave bear spent the
long cold winter hibernating in caves.
The winters got longer and longer.
Many bears died of starvation, and
many of those that survived got dis-

Cave bears also had another enemy,

Neanderthal man,
Did men eat cave a cave man closely
bears and other
related to ourcave:.dwelling
animals?

selves but who

was not quite so
intelligent. These cave men used to hunt
the bears-probably by filling the caves
with smoke, blinding them with flaming
torches, and then clubbing them to
death. Hundreds of skulls and other

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bones of cave bears have been found in

some caves, all stacked up in neat piles.
These may have been animals killed as
sacrifices.
In caves in South America the remains of another completely different
animal have been found. These were
giant sloths. Unlike their living relatives, the giant sloths could not climb
trees. They used their massive hindquarters to anchor their bodies while
they pulled trees over to browse on the

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leaves. When the first Indians arrived

in South America, they probably
hunted giant sloths - but the animals
were already on the way to extinction.
The South American Indians may
well have hunted elephants! When
the Mongol ancestors of the Indians
crossed from Asia into Alaska, there
were mammoths in .the northern regions, and the colonists of South America probably hunted mastodons several
hundred years later.

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Pieces of skin of the extinct giant sloth have been found in South American caves.

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The tar pit of Rancho La Brea in California has

Which animals ha~e
provided one
been found in tar
of the biggest
pits?
collections of
fossils ever found in one spot. At
Rancho La Brea, ta_r seeped through
the earth's surface, forming pools.
Small animals would probably be
able to run across the sticky surface of
the tar without too much difficulty, and
they would probably be attracted by .
pools of water that collected on the surface. But any large animal attempting
to venture onto the tar soon became
trapped. The struggles of the dying ani-

mals attracted meat-eating animals and

scavengers, who would also get caught. .
The corpses soon sank into the tar,
where some of the most complete and
best preserved fossils have been found.
The species found in the Rancho La
Brea tar pit include extinct species of
mice, coyotes, eagles, owls, condors,
puma, bears, bison, camels, peccaries,
and many others. Two of the most famous animals found there were the dire
wolf and the saber-toothe~ cat (often
called the saber-toothed tiger). These
predators were attrac~ed to the tar pit
by the animals trapped then,!, only to
die themselves.

Some of the best preserved fossils in the world are those of animals trapped in tar pits.

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Once slaughtered by the thousands, the passenger pigeon is now extinct.

Man Spreads Over the World

- and the A.nimals Disappear
The most common bird to have been
exterminated
What was the most
by man was

passing over per minute - and estimated there were over two billion birds
in this one flock. He reckoned there
were 2,230,272,000 birds. This was in
1810; by 1900 they were practically extinct. About a hundred years ago a
nesting colony 28 miles long and between three and four miles wide was
seen in Michigan. But, as the railways
spread, so did the rate at which man
destroyed the passenger pigeon. Enormous numbers were slaughtered, mainly
for food- one depot in New York
handled about 18,000 birds a day in
1855. By 1879 something like 5,000
men worked full time as passenger pig-

common bird to
have become extinct?

undoubtedly
the passenger
pigeon of North America. In fact, the
passenger pigeon may once have been
the most common bird in the world.
Some of the flocks were simply enormous. The famous ornithologist Alexander Wilson described a flock that
"darkened the sky" - it was several
miles across and took hours to pass
overhead. He calculated the size of the
flock - using the time it took to pass
over, its width, and the number of birds

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The extinct great auk of the North Atlantic was flightless like the penguins of the Antarctic; so was the
dodo. Both were easy prey for man and his animals.

tain number, they w~re doomed. The

last nest was found in 1894.
Passenger pigeons had been bred on
many occasions in zoos and in private
aviaries - but everything about their
extinction happened rapidly, before
anyone seemed really aware of what was
going on. The last passenger pigeon in
the world, "Martha," died on September 1, 1914, in the Cincinnati Zoo.
Plenty of passenger pigeons were stuffed
- they are pretty birds - and they are
still on display in most of the larger
natural history museums of the world,
but no one will ever see passenger pigeons flying in the wild again.

eon hunters-and hundreds more local

hunters would join in. In 187.9 about one
billion birds were killed in Michigan
alone!
Not only did the passenger pigeon
migrate in vast flocks, but as already
mentioned, it nested in huge colonies.
It was possibly this habit that led in part
to its rapid extinction. Many birds nest
in dense colonies - the predators cannot kill enough to make much difference to the overall success of the colony
- but when man comes on the scene,
he really can make a difference with his
super-efficient ways of killing. Once the
flocks were reduced fo less than a cer-

18

flights the
Ima ls.

America also hunted them. It was probably because they were flightless and unable to nest in particularly inaccessible
places that they were easy to catch, and
by the beginning of the nineteenth century they were well on the way to extinction. The last few eggs were eagerly
hunted by collectors. In June, 1844, the
last pair of auks 1was killed near Iceland. Odd auks were seen from time to
time for a few years afterwards, but all
that is known of the great auk today are
a few skins and eggs in museums though, two hundred years ago, they
were still being harvested for food.
The term, "as dead as a dodo," has
come to be
What does "as dead
d
use
to <leas a dodo" mean?
scribe anything
that is extinct - and cannot be made to
come back. The dodos were strange
birds found only on islands in the Indian Ocean. The best-known dodo is
the one once found on the island of
Mauritius. This dodo became extinct
about 1680.
Sailors from passing ships killed the
dodos, which were very easy to catch,
for food; but is was probably the pigs
that were allowed to run loose all over
the island which finally exterminated
the dodo. The dodo was flightless and
built its nest on the ground, and the
eggs provided an attractive source of
food for the semi-wild pigs.
The dodo was a very strange-looking
bird: it had a bulky body with a massive
head and beak, and large, strong feet.
The wings were ridiculous, useless little
sprouts, and the tail looked as if it had
been added as an afterthought.

The great auk was once found in many

parts of the
What happened to North Atlantic
the great auk?

Ocean, including
Britain and North America. It was
related to the razorbills, guillemots,
puffins, and murres, but it was much
larger, standing about two and a half
feet high. Its wings were small and useless for flight. In fact, it looked very
much like the penguins which are found
in the Southern Hemisphere. Sailors
from Scandinavia, and the islanders
living in the Faeroes, the Hebrides, the
Shetlands, the Orkneys, and Iceland,
all hunted the great auk, as well as
many qther species of seabird. The
Eskimos and other inhabitants of North

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Moos looked like ostriches. The Maoris hunted some species, but now they are all extinct .

New Zealand was originally uninhabited by

Did flightless birds
mammals, exbecome extinct on
cept for two spelarger islands?
cies of bats. All
the other mammals caine with the human colonists, first with the Maoris and
then with the Europeans. The vegetation was rich, lush and extremely varied,
so the birds developed into types quite
distinct from,those found anywhere else
in the world. In the grassy plains, where
deer or antelcipe would have been found
in other parts of the world, there were
large flightless birds resembling
ostriches. These were the moas. There
were about twenty different species of
moa; some were large, standing nearly

twelve feet tall, others were no larger

than a chicken. They were found mainly
in the grassy plains (and known as
lawn-moas!)
When the Polynesians first colonized
New Zealand around A.D. 950 there
were still many species of moa found
/ there, though they Were probably already declining. The vegetation of New
Zealand was changing to a more
forested type, and as the grassy plains
disappeared, so would the moas. The
Maoris, who arrived in the fourteenth
. century, hunted many species of moa
and no doubt helped them on their way
to extinction - some are known for
certain to have been hunted by the
Maoris. Four species probably sur-

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vived into the fifteenth century, and

one still survived as late as 1785.
Archaeologists have found the remains
of moas in the kitchen refuse of Maori
campsites, including bfrs of feathers
and parts of eggs.
The huia, of New Zealand, is quite
unrelated to the moa, but also extinct.
It was a forest-dwelling bird, found
deep in undisturbed forests. Male and
female huias had a working partnership
- no other birds are known to have
helped each other as they did. The male
had a short chisel-shaped bill with
which he hammered away at rotting tree
trunks to expose insects and grubs. The
female had a long, slender, curved bill
with which she extracted the grubs for
herself and her mate. The clearing of
New Zealand's forests soon destroyed
suitable trees, and the last reliable observation of a huia was in 1907.

Giant birds have been evident in several

parts of the
Did large birds live
world. Most of
anywhere else in
them died out
the world?
before man appeared. The giant elephant bird of
Madagascar, however, probably lived
on into historic times. It is thought, in
fact, that stories of this bird told by
traders and merchants probably started
the legend of the roe - the mythical
bird that Sinbad the Sailor encountered.
The enormous eggs of these now-extinct
birds can still be found in Madagascar,
though they are usually broken. It is
easy to believe the stories of a bird that
fed on elephants - a bird laying such
large eggs must surely have been of
gigantic proportions. The egg of an
elephant bird was about three feet in
cfrcumfererice and held more than two
gallons of fluid.

,.
The giant eggs of the elephant bird gave rise to
the legend of the roe, which carried off Sinbad.

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HONEY CREEPER

In the past 200 years, more birds have become extinct in Hawaii than anywhere else in the world.

Many of the birds that have become

extinct, or are
Why is it that some
very rare, are
b .1rds canno t fl y.?
flightless. They
also often lived on islands. When these
birds first colonized the islands, there
were few other birds or animals, and
so they were not hunted. They rarely
needed to fly to escape. Also, on a
fairly small island, there is always the
risk that during a storm bird in flight
will be blown out to sea - so it could
be a real advantage to be unable to fly.
Throughout the thousands of years
since they first colonized the islands,
many of the birds had lost their power
of flight. They were at a real disadvan-

tage when man came along. Not only

did man hunt many of the birds for
food, but he also brought with him
many other animals which were released
on the islands. The rats, pigs, goats,
dogs, cats, and mongooses which men
introduced all over the world destroyed
the natural vegetation or preyed on the
eggs of ground-nesting birds. Many of
the flightless birds found on islands
were found nowhere else in the world
- some fifteen species of rails (wading
birds) have become extinct in the last
three hundred years or so. Most of these
rails were flightless, and their extinction
was caused by man's arrival on the
islands.

22

Many of the birds were beautiful,

and their skins were used by the Hawaiians to make robes and ornaments for
important occasions. At one time they
were blamed for the extinction of several of the birds, but it is obvious now
that they had very little to do with it.
When Captain James Cook visited
Hawaii, he was presented with some
beautiful feather capes. These were
made from red and yellow feathers, but
when mohos, which had tufts of yellow
feathers on their shoulders, became
rare, and yellow feathers difficult to obtain, they used black feathers as well.
Many of the birds are known by their
beautiful, and unusual Hawaiian names:
o-o, mamo, ou, palila, ula-ai-hawane,
akialoa, nukupuu.

The Hawaiiari Islands were once mhabited by a

Why have so many
dazzling array
birds become extinct
of beautiful
on the Hawaiian
birds. Some
Islands?
are still to be
found there, but many of them have
died out. The Polynesians who were
living in the Hawaiian Islands when
Captain Cook arriv~d had not had much
effect on the wildlife - but the European, and later the American, settlers
started chopping down the forests and
brought with them rats, pigs, and lots
of different sorts of birds, from all over
the world. Of the sixty-eight different
species of birds once found on the
Hawaiian Islands, forty of them are
probably extinct now.

23

All that remain now are a few skeletons

in museums and traveler's descriptions.
During the Ice Age, lions were found
as far north
Have lions ever been
as Britain,
found in Europe?
occurring
throughout Europe, through France,
Holland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and also as far away as Siberia.
These lions were known as cave lions,
and may have been slightly different in
appearance from mod~rn lions. In
Greece there were still lions in historical
times. When Xerxes was attempting to
conquer Greece in 480 B.c., his equip-
ment carriers Were attacked by lions in
Macedonia in northern Greece. Aristotle, who wrote the first real natural
history book, noted that lions were rare
in Greece (this was in about 300 B.C.).

l1.

Steller's sea cow was extinct 27

years after it was discovered.

Steller's sea cow was a large ungainly

sea mammal reWhich animal
lated to the dudisappeared the
gongs and the
fastest?
manatees. These
animals, peering out of the sea, and
covered with seaweed, are supposed to
have given rise to stories about mermaids! Scientists gave this order of
water mammals the name Sirenia after the mythical sirens who lured
sailors to their doom.
Steller's sea cow was the largest of
the "sirens," growing to over twentyfive feet in iength. It was a sluggish
animal that fed on underwater plants.
When it was discovered in 17 41, it
was already fairly uncommon. Whaling
parties easily slaughtered the defenseless, slow-moving, somewhat dull-witted
animal, and by 17 68 (only twentyseven years after they had been discovered) they were probably extinct.

In 480 BC Xerxes' equipment carriers

were attacked by lions, in Greece.

24

In the first century another writer

recorded that the lions that were once
found in Macedonia were extinct.
Lions were also very common in
many parts of North Africa and the
Middle East. Nearly all the ancient
civilizations portrayed their kings hunting lions. The tombs of the Pharaohs
of Egypt and the kings of Babylon and
other famous states include many
sculptures and paintings of lion hunts.
At the time of the Crusades there were
still lions in the Holy Land - the descendants of the lions known to Samson. Now the only place where any
number survive outside Africa is the
forest of Gir in India. If that forest can
be protected, there is no reason why
the lion population should not increase.

In prehistoric times, horses and their

relatives were
Which horses have
widespread in
become extinct?
Europe, Asia,
and Africa. As man spread, he also
domesticated one of the wild horses. As
land was turned into farmland and
plowed or grazed, the wild horses became a nuisance, and so they were.
hunted. The wild horses and their relatives comprise two horses, several wild
asses, the donkey, and several zebras.
Many of these have disappeared or are
extremely rare. Two Asiatic horses were
once widespread, but the small tarpan
was hunted to extinction in the 1880's,
and Przewalski's horse has almost died
out in the wild - though a few are kept
m zoos.

The Pharaohs were often portrayed hunting lions.

25

The other type of horse to become

extinct in recent times is the quagga. It
was striped like a zebra on the forequarters and plain like a horse on the
hindquarters. When the first settlers arrived in South Africa, they roamed the
plains in large herds. But the quagga,

'lI .

unfortunately, along with other zebra

and antelope, ate the same food as the
cattle the settlers brought with them,
and so the farmers set about exterminating wildlife. They were successful.
The only place the quagga can be seen
now is in museums or in photographs.

Wild horses are among the animals man has made rare or extinct. The tarpon and the quagga both become extinct in
the nineteenth century. Przewalski's horse is r1ow found mainly in zoos.

' '

TARPAN

QUAGGA
PRZEWALSKl'S HORSE

When Europeans discovered Australia,

they were amazed
Which marsupials
t th . . l t
a
e amma s o
. h d?
have vanis
e .
b
M
f
e seen. ost o
the mammals were marsupials - animals that carry their young in pouches.
Safe in Australia, these primitive mammals had survived millions of years.
When the Europeans arrived, abol,lt
eight different species were to become
extinct and many more were to become
extremely rare.
The marsupials are extremely vari-

able - there are grazing marsupials,

such as the kangaroos, burrowing molelike marsupials, mouse-like, shrew-like,
and even flesh-eating species. The largest of the flesh-eaters is the thylacine, or
Tasmanian wolf.
The thylacine is now on the verge of
extinction. Every few years this animal
is sighted, and in 1966 the Australian
government set aside 1,600,000 acres
as a reservation, in which it was hoped
that most of the surviving thylacines
lived. This same government had,
26

ra
te

l,
[-

!.
1

one is believed to have been killed in

Sutherland in 1743.
The brown bear became extinct much
earlier, though no one knows for certain exactly when it died out. It probably survived until the eleventh century
in Scotland. Being much more remote
and with a very much smaller population, Scotland was the last stronghold
of several animals that have now disappeared. The reindeer was described
by Norwegian visitors to Caithness in
the twelfth century. They have since
died out, but then, a few years ago, a
herd was reintroduced into the Cairngorms. The capercaillie, a large forestdwelling gamebird which also eventually became extinct, even in Scotland,
was also reintroduced and now flourishes once more. Wildcats and pine
martens were both more or less exterminated over most of their range m
Great Britain, but have managed to
survive in remote parts of Scotland.

around 1900, paid a bounty for every

thylacine killed. The thylacine is doglike in appearance, but with a long thin
tail and dark stripes on its back. It was
shot, poisoned and trapped by farmers
for stealing chickens and killing sheep.
Over twenty-five different marsupials
are in serious danger of becoming extinct. Even now, although it is against
the law to export any live Australian
animals without a permit, it is a common sight to see remote areas littered
with the corpses of kangaroos.
Within historical times, several animals
have become exWhat animals
tinct in what is
became extinct in
now Great BritGreat Britain?
ain. Until well
into the Middle Ages (and much later
in many parts of the country), many of
the forests of England were inhabited
by wolves. Wolves, in fact, survived
until the eighteenth century - the last

PINE MARTEN

REINDEER

27

At one time bison were found over a vast area and slaughtered., They were just barely saved from extinction.

The Effort to Save Animals

Many animals are on the verge of ex. tinction today.
What are the causes Th
of animal extinction?
ere are mahny
reasons w y
this is so, and there are usually reasons
why a particular animal is in danger.
Some animals have decreased in number for hundreds of years due to
changes in climate and vegetation. For
instance, the giant panda and the
whooping crane are both rare, probably
for these reasons. Other animals, such
as the North American bison and the
Arabian oryx, are rare because of senseless and destructive hunting. But probably most endangered animals are
threatened because of man's intrusion
in the places in which they live.

When the first settlers were movmg

across America's
How many buffalo
"Wild West," the
were there in
herds of bison
America?
(or buffalo, as
they are sometimes ealled) seemed limitless. There were probably sixty million
bison roaming the plains in herds that
often contained several thousand animals. As the settlers spread across the
prairies, so the hunters went ahead.
Sometimes they were empl~yed to supply meat for workmen on the railroads,
but often the slaughter was far greater
than was needed to supply their needs.
At that time it seemed that the bison
would last forever - but by the beginning of this century there were only a

28

AREA ON
INHABITE
AMERICA
BISON

some were allowed to roam wild, and

since then small herds have been released in remote forests in Russia and
Romania. There are also small herds of
bison in several zoos.
There are five living species of rhinoceroses which
What other large
could become exanimals are in
tinct in the near
danger?
future. Two species are so close to it that it is unlikely
that anything will be done in time to
save them. The five species are the black
and the white rhinoceroses of Africa,
and the Indian, Sumatran, and Javan
rhinoceroses of Asia.
The most numerous species is the
black rhino, though even this species
is decreasing very quickly. Black rhinos
once roamed the plains of Africa by the
thousands, but now they have been exterminated over most of their former
range. The white rhino has suffered
even more - its name comes not from
its color, but from a mispronunciation
of the Afrikaans name, wide ( wijd )lipped rhino. After the elephants, the
white rhino is the largest living land
.mammal. A large male can be up to six
and a half feet tall at the shoulder and
weigh over three tons. In recent years
it has increased its numbers in some
parts of its range and attempts are being
made to breed it in captivity.
The rhinos of Asia, on the other
hand, are in a really serious situation.
The great Indian rhino is a large species
standing over six feet tall, and looks
almost armor-plated. At one time it was
found in many parts of northern India
and Nepal (it is a water-loving species,

RANGE OF
TWOGRE
HERDS IN
1870
~NGEOF
~ERDSIN

1880

few hundred left throughout America.

By careful conservation, man has now
managed to re-establish several large
herds, and in the National P;irks of
Canada and the U.S.A. these magnificent animals can once more be seen.
Few people realize that a bison very
similar to the one found in America
once roamed Europe. '.fhe European
bison, or wisent, lived mainly in deep
forests. As the forests were cut down,
so the bison were hunted and exterminated. By the beginning of the twentieth
century, they existed only deep in the
forest of Bialowieza, in Poland. They
were fairly safe there until World War
I, when a shortage of food led to the
slaughter of the last 737. Luckily, there
were several zoos, and after the war as
many as possible were gathered together in an enclosure in the Bialowieza
Forest and allowed to breed. In 1956

29

'/ 1
1

'I
I

'

In Asia, rhinos are killed for their horn. The Javan and the Sumatran rhinos are on the verge of extinction.

and rarely found very far from a wallow). Although sanctuaries have been
set up for the protection of .the rhinos,
there is still considerable poaching. The
poachers want only the horn which is
widely believed by the Chinese and .
other Orientals to have medicinal properties. Considerable sums of money are
paid for the horns.
The Javan rhino was, until about a
century ago, quite widely distributed.
It was found in most of Southeast Asia
as far as the Chinese border, and at the
beginning of this century was still being
hunted around Saigon. It was also once
found on Sumatra, but the last ones .
died just before the Second World War.
It is now one of the rarest animals in the
world - there may be as few as twenty-

30

five left in the wild. A reservation has

been set aside to protect them and also
the few remaining J avan tigers, which
are the rarest carnivores in the world.
It seems unlikely that the Javan rhinos
can survive without more protection.
The Sumatran rhino is small and
somewhat hairy. It is not confined to the
island of .Sumatra. It is found also on
Borneo, in Burma, Malaya, and perhaps in adjacent countries. Altogether
it is doubtful if there are more than two
hundred left in the wild in fact, it is
quite likely that there are less than a
hundred of them left alive. Most of
them are in a reservation on Sumatra,
and if they can be guarded against
poachers, there is a chance that their
numbers might increase.

The Arabian oryx has become very

well known
Is there any h$>pe
through the
that the Arabian oryx
efforts of natwill survive?
uralists to preserve it from what was very nearly
certain extinction. It was once found
over a large part of Arabia and the
Middle East, and was fairly common.
It was safe from hunters, it was able
to live under the extremely harsh conditions of the desert, it was very
fast, and it could travel over long distances without water. From a distance
it looked like a white horse with a single
long curved horn. Oryxes seen in the
distance may have given rise to the

descriptions of the mythical unicorn.

With the development of the oil industry in the Middle East, wealthy oil
sheiks began hunting the oryx With
modern automatic weapons from fastmoving jeeps and cars. The oryxes did
not have a chance, and they were soon
exterminated over large parts of their
range. They are now reduced to only a
few hundred, at the most, in the wild.
Fortunately, however, some have been
captured and small breeding herds have
been started in captivity - some in
Arabia and one in Arizona. At least
the species is fairly safe fr.om extermination, and perhaps one day oryxes will
roam the Arabian deserts again safely.

Rich oil sheiks helped to exterminate the oryx, hunting from cars with automatic weapons.

31

;,

They wer~ seen only in migration and

on their wintering grounds at the nowfamous Aransas Refuge in Texas. Then,
in 1955, a bird sitting on its nest was
spotted from an airplane. The nest was
in. the vast Wood Buffalo Park in Canada, a National Park of nearly 11 million acres. By careful surveillance, both
from land and from the air, more nests
were located. A careful check is kept
on them. The annual "census" is taken
when the birds arrive at Aransas. D~
spite bad years when few, or even no,
young have been raised, there has been
a steady increase over the years and
there are now about 50 birds.

The story of the whooping crane is unfinished. So far

Has the whooping
it has hovered
crane been saved?
on the brink of
disaster for several years - but it will
be a few years before anyone can say
for certain that they are safe. The
whooping crane has probably been
fairly rare for some considerable time
- even before man's interference. It is
thought that in 1870 there were only
1,300 birds; unfortunately, by 1942,
this number has decreased to only 23.
They were strictly protected ~y then,
but no one knew where they nested the last nest had been found in 1922.

The whooping crane nests in remote parts of Wood Buffalo Park in Canada.

32

The giant panda is used as a symbol for conservationists.

Although known to be quite rare,

they have never been hunted a great
deal; except for a period during the
1930's, when many were shot or captured for museums and zoos. Their
number is not very large, as they are
found only in the remote bamboo jungles of Szechwan - but so long as these
jungles are left intact, the giant panda
should be safe. In recent years, several
have been bred in Chinese zoos. They
are completely protected by the Chinese government.

The giant panda has become famous

as the animal
Where is the giant
chosen by the
panda found?
World Wildlife
Fund as its symbol. The first live panda
to be seen outside China was the one
shown in the Chicago zoo in 1936. This,
and other pandas shown in zoos elsewhere, were very popular with the public, and pandas have remained a firm
favorite. The home of the panda is in
remote bamboo forests in China. A
panda looks like a black and white bear.

33

The largest animals the world has ever known have been brought to the verge of extinction by man's greed.

, blue whale joins the dfoosaur as a museum specimen, but no longer living.
If this does happen, it will be due entirely to man's greed. It was not until
the middle of the last century, when the
harpoon gun was invented, that blue
whales were hunted. Until then, only
small whales were killed. But ever since,
whales have been ruthlessly pursued.
The methods used to kill whales
involve firing a harpoon filled with

Whales are the largest animals that have

ever lived How does whaling
even the largest
affect the number
of the tremenof whales?
dous dinosaurs
is believed to have weighed only about
50 tons! The blue whale may weigh
over 150 tons and grow to nearly 100
feet in length. Even its new-born babies
are bigger than a full-grown elephant!
But it may not be very long before the

34

explosives into the animal and then

detonating the explosives. Although the
methods used to kill whales are quicker
than those used in the past, they would
be considered outrageously cruel if they
were used on any other animal. Whales
are considered to be among the most
intelligent of all mammals.
Several species of whales have already been completely exterminated or
made very rare in the Atlantic by whal-

ing, and elsewhere practically all the

larger whales are being over-hunted.
Restrictions on the numbers of' whales
that can be killed each year have been
made - but sometimes the whaling
fleets have been unable to catch even
the few they were allowed to catch because the whales are getting so rare
now. It is very likely that ll;nless some
species, such as the blue whale, are protected, they will soon become extinct.

35

The trade in furs for women's coats has made the big cats rare .

of their range they are given some sort

of protection, but it is often very difficult to enforce the law. Fortunately,
some tigers are being bred in zoos; but
their future will be ensured only when
really large tracts of suitable country,
containing plenty of suitable animals
for the tigers to feed upon, can be set
aside.
On the island of Java there are probably no more than a dozen or so tigers
left; about fifteen or twenty in Iran;
some in Afghanistan. There are very

There are relatively few places now

where tigers
Where can tigers still
can be found
be found in the wild?

in the wild, although earlier this century there were

places where they were still fairly abundant. They once were widespread in
places as far apart as Persia, Java, Siberia, India, and China. Now they remain in only a few reserves and remote
mountains. In Siberia and other parts
of the U.S.S.R., tigers are strictly protected. In India and most other parts

36

few surviving in China, as they lived in

fairly densely populated areas, and unlike most rare animals found in China,
they are not protected. Tigers are protected in many parts of India, but although they are now very rare almost
everywhere, tiger-hunting "shikars" are
still advertised by some travel firms.
In the past, tigers, along with most
other large predatory animals, have
been accus_ed of causing widespread
damage to domesti~ animals and also of
killing humans. But they usually take

human life only when they are injured

and unable to catch their normal food.
Today there are too few of them left
to be considered a serious menace to
human life, but they are still hunted to
make fur coats or rugs. A number of
film stars and other well-known personalities have given up this fashion, emphasizing the fact that it was helping to
make tigers and "spotted" cats ( cheetahs, ocelots, and snow leopards) extinct. By wearing nylon fur, people can
help save wild animals.

37

numerous, the natterjack and sand lizard were once considerably more widespread. They have been declining for
many years and now their extinction
seems almost certain. All three species
are found in sandy habitats, often near
the coast. The main cause of their decline is habitat destruction. Fires are a
danger - many sandy areas have gorse
and heather which ,easily catch fire from
a careless match or cigarette.

Britain is too far north for most species

of reptiles and
What reptiles and
amphibians.
amphibians are
Cold -blooded
becoming extinct in
animals prefer a
Britain?
warmer climate.
Of the few species found in the British
Isles, three are in immediate danger of
extinction: the sand lizard, the smooth
snake, and the natterjack toad. Although they have probably never been

1.

: r

Destruction of habitat endangers animals. As the heathlands are destroyed, so are the sand lizards, smooth snakes,
natterjack toads, and Dartford warblers.

The Dartford warbler is a pretty, longtailed, pinkish bird

Are heathland
that was often
birds in danger?
found in gorse and
heather, but it has also become nearly
extinct in Britain. This bird needs the

gorse and heather to breed in, and it

also needs mild winters. Every time
there is a long, cold winter, many Dartford warblers die. The number left is
now so small that it can be only a few
years before they die out.

38

RARE AND EXTINCT BRITISH BIRDS

GREAT GRAY SHRIKE

KITE

WRYNECK

I
I

I
I
I

I
SOME OF THE WORLD'S MOST ENDANGERED ANIMALS

BLUE WHALE

SEA OTTER

40
-- ---- ... -- ...

--- .'---.:;;--.,
- . . .... ........."'"'-

. '

....

--.....-..__:......-..:---.... __

"-...._,. ------ '---

ASIAN LION

Pere David's deer escaped from the Imperial Hunting Park and were killed by starving peasants.

Not only is the story of the survival of

this deer interesting,
What is Pere
but it is also one of
David's deer?
the strangest looking
deer. Pere David's deer died out in the
wild about three thousand years ago,.
when the swamps in which it lived in
China were drained and farmed. For
the next three thousand years it survived only in parks. In 1865, the French
missionary and naturalist, Abbe Armand David, managed to peek over the

42

walls of Non Hai-tzu - the Imperial

Hunting Park in Peking - and saw the
last remaining herd of these deer. During the next year Pere David managed
to get hold of two skins which he sent
to the Paris Natural History Museum,
and the new species was named after
him. A little later several live deer were
sent to zoos in Europe. Then, in 1894,
during a famine, a flood burst through
the walls of the Hunting Park and most
of the deer escaped, only to be killed

The Duke of Bedford's herd of Pere David's deer preserved the species from extinction.

and eaten by the starving peasants.

Those that managed to survive were
killed by foreign soldiers during the
Boxer Rebellion in 1900. By 1911 there
were only two left in China.
Realizing that Pere David's deer was
about to become extinct, the Duke of
Bedford, a zoologist, gathered together
all the animals he could. He collected
them from zoos and parks throughout
Europe, and formed a herd on his estate
at Woburn. They started breeding, and

by 1922, just after the last two had died

in China, he had over 60. After the
Second World War, surplus animals
were sent from Woburn to other zoos,
and by the early 1960's there were altogether over 400. Then, in 1964, London Zoo sent four animals to Peking.
Thus, Pere David's deer became one of
the first animals to be saved from almost
certain extinction by breeding in captivity. It emphasized the important
work that zoos can do for conservation.
43

Man is, of course, an animal, and at the

present time is
.
Is the human race .
becoming extinct? increasing very
rapidly - so
rapidly, in fact, that he is spreading into
all corners of the world and often causing other species of animals to become
extinct.
Several races of humans have become
extinct. When Charles Darwin visited
Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost
tip of South America, in 1832, there
were about three thousand Y ahgans.
They lived in one of the bleakest parts

of the world in a very primitive state , they were extremely tough and hunted
and slept almost naked in the snow and
rain. But although they could survive
the hardships of climate, they could not
fight off the diseases Europeans brought
with them. Also, the clothing wellnieaning missionaries and settlers gave
them merely kept them wet. When they
wore no clothes, the.y quickly dried. Typhoid, measles, TB, pneumonia and flu
killed them off, and by 1933 there were
only about 40 Yahgans left. Now they
have an died, and what was once a

The Yahgans could resist terrible weather-but not European diseases.

44

European settlers hunted Tasmanians as if they were wild animals. They were all extinct by 1876.

still living in the Stone Age and could

not understand the new ways. When
they saw cattle and sheep instead of
.kangaroos, they hunted them. The
Tasmanians were hunted as if they were
animals, and by 1835 there were only
about two hundred of them left. A missionary named George Robinson persuaded them to go to Flinders Island,
where they would be protected, but
tribal life was discontinued. The last
Tasmanian aborigine died in 1876.

flourishing tribe is known only by drawings, photographs, and the things they
made.
The story of the Tasmanians is a
shocking one. When Captain James
Cook visited Tasmania (or Van Diemen's Land, as it was then known), he
described the Tasmanian aborigines as
being mild and cheerful. In 1798, the
first European settlers arrived and a
prison colony of convicts sent from England was set up. The Tasmanians were

45

Europeans took the Red Indians' lands away from them-often by force.

In many parts of the world, man has

tried to get rid
Has man
of other men.
exterminated other
men anywhere else During the last
century' when
in the world?
,
empires were
being expanded, settlers left Europe for
far-flung parts of the wodd. Many of
these places were already inhabited,
and if the native population could not .
be enslaved, they were often driven out
or killed. In the New World the white
men drove Indians from their tribal
hunting grounds, and when the Indians
fought back, the white men declared
war and tried to exterminate them.
When Captain Cook went to New
Zealand, there were about 10,000
Maoris living there. When the white,
settlers arrived, they fought the terrible

46

In the Xingu National Park the Brazilian Indians have

8,50

At one time the plains of Argentina were inhabited by Indians, Now gauchos herd cattle where Indians were massacred .

Maori Wars. By' 1896, there were 42,000 Maoris, but the settlers had increased to about 500,000.
The South American Indians have
suffered particularly badly at the hands
of the white men. They have been
driven out of the plains of Argentina,
where gauchos now raise cattle. In
Brazil, about a hundred tribes are
known to have been exterminated since
1500. The persecution and extermination still continues. Simply meeting a
white man can be fatal to the primitive
tribes living in remote jungles of the
Amazon basin, because they have no
way of fighting off diseases such as the
common cold. In an attempt to halt the
exploitation of lands where Indians live
and to protect them from disease, the
,government of Brazil created Xingu

ve

8,500 square miles which are protected from exploitation.

47

National Park in 1962. This park consists of about 8,500 square miles of the
tribal lands of the Xingu peoples who in 1884 were thought to have a
population of about three thousand, but
by 1962 had been reduced to only three
hundred.
Many scientistsalso believe that Dian

may be destroying himself by overpopulating the world - there just is

not enough food to feed everyone now,
let alone in the future. Unless the numbers of humans are controlled, families,
plagues, and wars will become more
common - they are nature's way of
restoring a balance.

Since 1900 roughly one species has become extinct every year. They are being pushed out by man. Unless man slaps
spreading, there will soon be no room lelt for wild animals ..

,11
i i

,1

,1

,.,

,.,

.. ,

.
.~

I
Produced and approved by noted authorities, these
books answer the questions most often asked about
science, nature and history. They are presented in a
clear, readable style, and contain many colorful and
instructive illustrations. Readers will want to explore
each of these fascinating subjects and collect these
volumes as an authentic, ready-reference, basic library.
5op1
5002
5004
5007
5008
5009
5011
5013
5014
5016
5021
5022
5024
5031

DINOSAURS
WEATHER
ROCKS & MINERALS
INSECTS
REPTILES
BIRDS
BEGINNING SCIENCE
THE HUMAN BODY
SEA SHELl,.S
THE MICROSCOPE
CHEMISTRY
HORSES
PRIMITIVE MAN
WILD FLOWERS

5032
5033
5034
5042
5046
5053
5055
5064
5065
5066
5069
5070
AND

DOGS
PREHISTORIC MAMMALS
SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
MAGNETS AND MAGNETISM
TREES
NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS
STARS
AIRPLANES AND THE STORY
OF FLIGHT
FISH
TRAINS AND SHIPS
ECOLOGY
OTHER TITLES