19th century British colonialists are fascinating in their complete and utter nonchalance toward hunting animals to extinction. For example, by the early 1900's, large-scale hunting by the British had reduced the population of the Indian rhinoceros to a mere 100. If you've read any books from the era, it appears that the thought that you could actually kill all of a particular animal never really crossed their minds, or really anyone else's. For example, if you read King Solomon's Mines (fantastic book), you'll notice that the main character's basic mentality is that every time he sees an elephant, regardless of whether or not he is hunting elephants at that moment, that elephant must die. Also, in the Swiss Family Robinson (smarmy rip-off of Robinson Crusoe), every time they come across a new animal on the island, the first thing they do is kill it. There's definitely an underlying assumption that the normal way of dealing with animals is by killing them, regardless of whether they need meat, bone, or leather at the moment--the idea that they might simply observe an animal, or merely continue on their way, doesn't even cross their minds. Since I'm not well-read enough to know, did anyone in that era ever say, "Now wait a minute. If we make it our goal to kill every single one of these animals that we see, without any regard for their reproduction rate, it's quite possible that they might eventually all be gone. Come on now, that's unwise. How can we hunt elephants if we've killed them all?" Or had no one's consciousness of how the animal kingdom works developed to that point, so everyone just sort of imagined that every animal is infinite supply?

Note: I am not particularly picking on the British here. Judging by the way Americans attempted to hunt the buffalo to extinction, had they colonized the world, they likely would have attempted to kill every single animal as well.