We condemn the Boer for his ruthless extermination of this little race; but to-day, we of culture and refinement, who are under no pressure of life and death, do nothing to preserve the scant relics of the race. The last of this folk are now passing away from us, together with those infinitely beautiful and curious creatures, which made for ages the South African plains the richest on earth, in that rarest and most delightful of all beauties, the beauty of complex and varied forms of life. Over them the humanity of future ages may weep; but they will never be restored to vary and glorify the globe, or to throw light on the mystery of sentient growth. We, as civilized men, must recognize that the extinction of a species of beast, and yet more a species of man, is an order of Vandalism compared with which the destruction of Greek marbles by barbarians, or of classical manuscripts by the Christians, were trifles; for it is within the range of a remote possibility that again among mankind some race may arise which shall produce such statues as those of Phidias, or that the human brain may yet again blossom forth into the wisdom and beauty incarnate in the burnt books; but a race of living things, once destroyed, is gone for ever--it reappears on earth no more. We are conscious that we are murdering the heritage of unborn generations; yet we take no step to stay the destruction. The money which one fashionable woman spends on dresses from Worth; the jewels and cut flowers one woman purchases for self-indulgence would save a race! Lands might be obtained, and such conditions be instituted, for a lesser sum, as might enable an expiring race to survive. And the money and labour expended on the murder and maintenance of a few miserable foxes in a land and among a people who say they have emerged from barbarism, would send down to future ages all the incalculable living wealth of South Africa. While we are unwilling to deny ourselves our lowest pleasures for this purpose, is it wise that we condemn, with delicate humanity and lofty pride, the simple fore-trekker, who, rather than die and see wife and children die, cleared out a small human race before him? It is probable that more enlightened ages will regard with far more sympathy the Boer who, having shot a pile of bucks, stood with his wife and sons busily cutting them up into biltong, that they might have the wherewithal to live, than that cultured savage who, to gratify a small vanity and boast of a big bag, slaughters the last of a race; and contemplates, as a Bushman might do, the heads fastened on his dining-room wall, with a pride that might only be justified had he created instead of destroyed them.