THE AMERICAN WAR ON ANIMAL LIFE.
THE money-lending nations are just now so anxious about the solvency of the States which owe money to them, that it is just possible that they forget that a time does some- times come when a land and a people have also to settle their accounts, and that when the overdraft upon the Bank of Nature is a heavy one, the people is apt to find itself ha a "tight place," with Time, the debtor's friend, wholly withheld, and impounded in the interest of the creditor. For Nature, with Time, and relieved of man, can and does, as a rule, re- dress the balance which man has destroyed. Meantime, what becomes of the postulate that "man must live "? Nature does not deny it, and issues, not a sentence of death, but notice to quit. All that she says is : "You have been wasteful, greedy, and stupid ; go, and live somewhere else, if yau. can." In Russia, where that alternative is not possible, a kind of apathy seems to have fallen on all forms of inquiry alike into the causes-and the remedies of an exhausted land. Curiosity is dead. Matters have gone too far, and famine and pestilence have stepped in to remove the heavy hand which man has laid upon the soil. In the United States, where expansion was pos- sible, and the population of farmers, fishermen, and hunters has moved outwards to the edges like the growth of a mush- room ring in a meadow, with exhausted soil in the centre, and luxuriant though short-lived growth at the margin, there has been lately a shower of official warnings of the inevitable limit to the wasteful and wilful selfishness which is eating out the heart of the soil, stripping the turf, levelling the forests, destroying the fisheries, and exterminating the wild birds and beasts of half a continent. The destruction among the wild animals, birds, and fish which has taken place during the last fifty years, could not be better illustrated than we find it in the Report just issued by Mr. Frederick Lucas, of the Smithsonian Institute, on the animals recently extinct, or threatened with extermination, represented in the National _Museum of the United States. This most interesting paper was suggested by the recent efforts made by American naturalists to secure for their museums specimens of animals, formerly quite common, which were passing unnoticed out of -existence, and of which in some cases it was found that no living example could be obtained. This led to a national stocktaking of the contents of the principal museums, and incidentally to a review of the process of destruction as it is now going on.
Some of the instances given seem almost incredible. Cod, perhaps the moat prolific fish used as food, were so completely destroyed on a part of the New England coast, that when the waters were restocked with the produce of a hundred and thirty million eggs, the fishermen of Plymouth, in Massa- chusetts, sent specimens of the "new fish" to Gloucester to inquire what they were. The work of the Fishery Com- mission has already gone far to repair the waste and destruc- tion of the New England fishermen, though a strenuous resistance has always been offered to their efforts to open the passage for shad and salmon to the spawning-grounds. But the lobster " canneries " have so far depleted the apparently inexhaustible stock, that the waters adjacent to the works are cleared of all but those of the smallest size ; and even the great oyster-grounds of Chesapeake Bay are showing signs of exhaustion ; while halibut are growing scarcer yearly. If the teeming reproductive power of the shad, the cod, and the oyster is unable to replace the havoc made among them, it may safely be inferred that the birds and beasts fare even worse in the unequal struggle for survival. Perhaps the nearest approach in mass and multitude to the shoals of fish some to be found off the American coasts, was the annual passage and assembly for nesting of the passenger-pigeons. Audubon once counted 163 flocks of these birds flying past him in twenty-one minutes ; and Andrew Wilson, from the data supplied by him, estimated the number of pigeons passing over a certain observed area at 1,115,136,000. What- -ever be the value of this astonishing conclusion, it is certain that Dr. Sagnisch, a German naturalist, saw in one valley a wood nine miles long, in which the pigeons had occupied with their nests every tree and sapling across the breadth of the walley, some trees holding from fifteen to twenty nests, from which the young were shaken down into sacks, baskets, and carts by the people who came to collect them. Not content with this prodigality of Nature, the greedy pigeon-hunters of Michigan have for years shot the nesting parent-birds, to- gether with the young, until they are stated to be "now un- known in most of those localities over which they passed." The pinnated grouse are now confined to the island of Nan- tucket, where, under the name of "heath-hen "—or "heathens," as described in the proclamation just issued by the Govern- ment printers—they are preserved. The Carolina parrot, the one indigenous parrot of North America, is also vanishing, and will soon become extinct, like the Pallas cormorant in the islands of Behring Sea. The last survivors of this, the largest of the cormorants, are thought to have perished, like the last of the gare-fowl, by the destruction of their island by a volcano, and their disappearance can hardly be laid at the door of American seamen.
The Californian vulture, the largest bird, except the condor, which is found in the continent, is vanishing, not from in- tentional persecution, but from the systematic poisoning of sheep-carcasses for the destruction of wolves and coyotes, to which the great vulture which shares their feast also falls a. victim. It in more difficult to account for the total disappear- ance of the Labrador duck. This bird, which is not apparently distinguished in its habits from other Northern wild-fowl of the same class, has for some time been as extinct as the great auk, and only rare examples of its plumage and appearance are to be found in the American museums. " Fashion " attacks the birds which appetite spares, and one American dealer sold two millions of bird-skins in a year ; but civilisation is not alone to blame for this. Those of the Pacific Islanders whom America has taken or would like to take under its protection, were the first offenders, and the " mamo," the " sickle-bird " of the Pacific, was destroyed to obtain the two or three feathers which, plucked from each, went to make war-cloaks such as that completed for Ka.mehama I., after a period of manufac- ture which covered the reigns of eight preceding Sovereigns, in which poll-taxes were paid in the coveted feathers, and a retinue of royal bird-catchers was in permanent employment.
The number of quadrupeds which have either vanished or are on the list of the proscribed, extends far beyond the names of
the bison and the moose ; and the far-seals, though maltreated and persecuted by the prowling hunters on their way to their breeding-places, are in no such danger of extermination as some of the Southern species. It is a characteristic example of the bias of the "supreme Caucasian mind" in its dealings with new animals, that when Columbus's sailors were sent to the top of the islet of Alta Vela in the West Indian Archi- pelago to look for missing ships, when engaged in the search for the mythical province of Cipango, they at once marked their joy at finding "eight sea-wolves" by knocking them all on the head. These "sea-wolves" were the West Indian seal, formerly common all over the archipelago, and off the coast of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, but now scarcely to be found on the mainland coast at all. It recently occurred to certain persons interested in natural history, that nothing had been heard lately of the Californian walrus, a huge and harm- less beast which was recently quite common on the coast of Lower California. It could hardly be supposed that herds of creatures from 14 to 16 ft. long, and of equal or even greater girth, could disappear from the coast without being missed ; but such appears to have been the case. For when the Laura,' in 1884, visited all their old haunts in the autumn, not one could be found ; and the party had to be contented with taking a number of their skins from San Cristobal to the National Museum at Washington. But the Californian walrus has enjoyed a century longer of existence than another member of Protein' flock, whose remains the United States naturalists have been anxiously seeking. The ritinas, or Arctic sea-cows, were literally and in fact all eaten up by hungry sailors in fourteen years. Behring's explorers in 1754 discovered an enormous kind of manatee, similar in character and habits to those which live in the tepid waters of the Amazons, or off the coast of the Straits Settlements, but of immense size, from 20 to 30 ft. long, and 20 ft. in girth. They were stupid, harmless beasts, which lived by browsing on the seaweeds and other marine growths by the shore. The pon- derous "sea cows" were far better meat than the fish-eating seals, and furnished the main food of the parties of explorers who visited Copper Island, their favourite haunt, for the next twelve years, when they became so scarce that other provisions had to be sought ; and in 1768 the last sea-cow was killed Mr. Lucas gives an interesting account of an expedition con- ducted by Dr. Styneger in search of their remains. Several isolated bones were found by prodding in the sand along the shore, and at last a great discovery was made inland. "Con- ceive my agitation," wrote the enthusiastic doctor, "when towards noon it was reported to me that the entire skeleton of a sea-cow had been found!" The report was true; but the bones were too soft to be removed. But enough sound ones were found to put together a complete skeleton, besides others which, like Mr. Silas Wegg's leg, were only available as a " miscellaneous " set.
Inland " skin-hunters " are destroying every animal which has a. hide worth selling, as fast as they killed off the bison. The price hardly makes a difference. Fifty cents per skin has almost exterminated the peccaries, the fierce little pigs which were once so common in some of the counties of Texas that the ground was covered by their tracks, and the air full of their musky odour. Black-tailed deer and antelope fare no better, and from all accounts the destruction of game in British Columbia is no less rapid than across the border. The best prospect of preventing their complete destruction will no doubt be found in the publicity which such writers as Mr. Lucas give to the facts which we have quoted from his well-written and well-arranged Report, which should give matter for consideration, not only for the States of the Union, but also for the Legislatures of British North America.
Previous page
