THE ABUNDANCE OF ANIMAL LIFE. 43 



statistical tables of tlie Minister of the Marine reaches the prodi- 

 gious figure of 1,407,390,400. In the same year there were returned 

 1,262,600 bushels of mussels and 620,000 bushels of other shellfish 

 than oysters and mussels. The same authority estimates that 

 2,200,000 lobsters, 16,000,000,000 shrimps and prawns, 1,080,000,000 

 sardines, and 400,000,000 herrings are consumed in France in a sin- 

 gle year. The cod, the mackerel, and the fresh fishes would also 

 represent considerable quantities. The fishermen cf the single 

 port of Boulogne took 63,000,000 kilogrammes of fish during a 

 period of nine years. Assuredly the statistics of such other coun- 

 tries as Great Britain, Norway, and Newfoundland would give 

 not less considerable figures. These numbers illustrate the rich- 

 ness of the life that is concealed under the waves of existing seas. 



Although the reptiles are much less various in our epoch than 

 during the Secondary age, they are still numerous in some regions. 

 According to Alcide d'Orbigny, caymans are numbered by thou- 

 sands in the province of Moxos. The traveler Leguat, speaking of 

 the extinct tortoises of the island of Rodriguez in 1708, wrote that 

 they were seen sometimes in troops of two or three thousand, so 

 that one could go more than two hundred paces on their backs 

 without putting his foot on the ground. M. A. Milne-Edwards 

 found reports in the office of the ministry according to which 

 thirty thousand tortoises were taken from Rodriguez in a year 

 and a half to supply Mauritius and Reunion. Venomous serpents 

 are so common in India that M. Sauvage says that in comparison 

 with them tigers and panthers are inoffensive beasts. According 

 to official documents, more than nineteen thousand persons per- 

 ished in India in one ye r from snake bites. 



Warm-blooded animals have especially multiplied in our 

 epoch. Livingstone met in the country of the Makololos more 

 than thirty different species of birds ; among them hundreds of 

 ibis, files of three hundred pelicans, myriads of ducks, many 

 geese, herons, kalas, crossbills, burgills, spoonbills, and flamingoes, 

 and an enormous multitude of gulls and cranes. Delegorgue has 

 also executed paintings showing the abundance of the birds. He 

 speaks of having seen five hundred or a thousand vultures upon a 

 single elephant's carcass. Nothing, he says, is more s range to the 

 hunter than to see rising at his approach, circling in the air, that 

 mass of feathered creatures which forms a kind of immense mov- 

 able dais above him. Alcide d'Orbigny, in his travels in Bolivia, 

 descending the Mamor^, found its banks animated with innumer- 

 able shore birds. The tantalus, in troops of several thousands, 

 marched with slow steps upo-i the muddy parts in company with 

 the red spoonbill or white egret, while the sand banks were cov- 

 ered with scissorbills and sea swallows, together with many goat- 

 suckers. In the country of the Chiquitos, D'Orbigny met cardinal 



