ANIMALS EXTINCT IN THE HISTORIC PERIOD. 337 



horned ox of Gaul and Germany, has been exterminated. The bison, 

 the largest of mammals in modern Europe, is on the point of disap- 

 pearing. The other wild ruminants are threatened with more or less 

 remote extinction, and the local authorities in each country hardly 

 understand the importance of checking a deplorable mischief which 

 will soon be beyond remedy. 



The history of the beaver is too well known to be repeated at 

 length. A mammal of the highest interest from its habits, valuable 

 for the products it yielded to commerce and manufactures, the beaver, 

 the largest of our rodents, was abundant in France and a great part 

 of Europe, down to the middle ages. In our day, its existence is 

 almost questionable. For several centuries they have been seen 

 only on the banks of the Rhone, or some affluent of that great river, 

 and the few individuals observed in their solitude, far from being ob- 

 jects of special protection, have always been killed. It seems that 

 quite lately a little family of beavers was discovered on an island of 

 tlie Rhone ; it was a piece of good luck, bringing the hope of seeing a 

 nearly extinct species revive again in the country. They were all de- 

 stroyed without mercy ; such a piece of stupidity is possible among 

 civilized people, when those who commit it do not even understand 

 the wrong they are doing. At present beavers are hardly more com- 

 mon in the other parts of Europe than they are in France, and every- 

 where their buried bones, in mud and peat-bogs, remain the witness 

 of those associations which were the wonder of animal life. In Can- 

 ada, beavers almost identical with those of Europe were still quite 

 generally found at no very remote time ; but they have become ex- 

 tremely rare. Their destruction has been brought about very rapidly, 

 through the cupidity of those great companies formed in North Amer- 

 ica in the last century for trading in furs. 



Extermination, pursued in a senseless fashion, has not only fallen 

 upon land mammals, but has been carried on as to marine species with 

 even greater fury. The large animals of the sea gave rise to active 

 industry and important commerce ; but selfishness, and the love of 

 gain, which forget the future in the present, have dried up that source. 

 A century ago, the whale was the object of most profitable fisheries, 

 and those huge cetacea are now so uncommon that their pursuit is 

 given up by most of the nations that once grew rich by following 

 it. Whalers were not content with the capture of old fish, but took 

 younger ones, of very little value, as well as those full-grown. The 

 satisfaction felt in depriving others of the possibility of a good catch 

 two or three years later was too great to permit the reflection that 

 success would thus soon become impossible for all Avhalers. 



The rytina, an herbivorous, cetaceous animal, belonging to the 



lamantin and dugong group, called sea-cows by the inhabitants of 



the coasts, was common a few hundred years ago in the latitudes of 



Behring's Islands. This animal, which attained a length of about 



TOL. v.— 22 



