For educated, civilized Man to exterminate a valuable wild species of living things is a crime. It is a crime against his own children, and posterity.     No man has a right, either moral or legal, to destroy or squander an inheritance of his children that he holds for them in trust. And man, the wasteful and greedy spendthrift that he is, has not created even the humblest of the species of birds, mammals, and fishes that adorn and enrich this earth. With all his wisdom, man has not evolved and placed here so much as a ground squirrel, a sparrow, or a clam. It is true that he has juggled with the wild horse and sheep, the goats and the swine, and produced some hardy breeds that can withstand his abuse without going down before it; but as for species, he has not yet created and placed here even so much as a protozoan.     The wild things of this earth are not ours, to do with as we please. They have been given to us in trust, and we must account for them to the generations which will come after us and audit our accounts.     But man, the shameless destroyer of Nature's gifts, blithely and persistently exterminates one species after another. Fully ten percent of the human race consists of people who will lie, steal, throw rubbish in parks, and destroy forests and wild life whenever and wherever they can do so without being stopped by a policemen. These are hard words, but they are absolutely true. From ten percent (or more) of the human race, the high moral instinct which is honest without compulsion is absent. The things that seemingly decent citizens,—men posing as gentlemen,—will do to wild game when they secure great chances to slaughter, are appalling. I could fill a book of this size with cases in point.     Today the women of England, Europe, and elsewhere are directly promoting the extermination of scores of beautiful species of wild birds by the devilish persistence with which they buy and wear feather ornaments made of their plumage. They are just as mean and cruel as the truck driver who drives a horse with a sore shoulder and beats him on the street. But they do it! And appeals to them to do otherwise they laugh to scorn, saying, "I will wear what is fashionable, when I please and where I please!" As a famous bird protector of England has just written to me, "The women of the smart set are beyond the reach of appeal or protest."     Today, the thing that stares me in the face every waking hour, like a grisly specter with bloody fang and claw, is the extermination of species. To me, that is a horrible thing. It is wholesale murder, no less. It is capital crime, and a black disgrace to humankind.There are three kinds of extermination:     The practical extermination of a species means the destruction of its members to an extent so thorough and widespread that the species disappears from view, and living specimens of it can not be found by seeking for them. In North America this is today the status of the whooping crane, upland plover, and several other species.     The absolute extermination of a species means that not one individual of it remains alive. Judgment to this effect is based upon the lapse of time since the last living specimen was observed or killed. When five years have passed without a living "record" of a wild specimen, it is time to place a species in the class of the totally extinct.     Extermination in a wild state means that the only living representatives are in captivity or otherwise under protection. This is the case of the heath hen and David's deer, of China.23Which sentence best expresses the author’s attitude toward the willful killing of animals? A. The author feels that killing animals is an outrageous and shameful crime and people need to act fast to save animals. B. The author believes that the thriving fashion industry is solely responsible for mass killing of animals and birds. C. The author is of the opinion that there is nothing worse than absolute extermination of innocent animals. D. The author is worried about the dwindling number of animals in the environment and thinks that we need more sanctuaries.