ANIMALS RECENTLY EXTINCT OR THREATENED WITH 



EXTERMINATION, AS REPRESENTED IN THE COLLECTIONS 



OF THE U, S. NATIONAL MUSEUM, 



By Fbedekic A. Lucas, 

 Assistcmt Curator of the Department of Comparative Anatomy. 



It is not, perhaps, generally realized how extensive and how rapid 

 are the changes that are taking place in almost the entire fauna of the 

 world through the agency of man. Of course changes have perpetu- 

 ally taken place in the past through the operation of natural causes, 

 and race after race of animals has disappeared from the globe, but there 

 is this wide difference between the methods of nature and man ; that the 

 extermination of species by nature is ordinarily slow, and the place of 

 one is taken by another, while the destruction wrought by man is rapid, 

 ami the gaps he creates remain unfilled. 



Some of the more obvious causes of extermination are to be found iu 

 the systematic killing of animals for their various products, the destruc- 

 tion caused by domesticated animals introduced into new countries, and 

 the bringing of wild land under cultivation. These are the more simple 

 and apparent destructive forces at work, and those that most directly 

 affect the larger animals, smaller creatures being influenced by smaller 

 causes. Thus the erection of telegraph wires, especially in sparsely 

 wooded regions, has proved very destructive to birds, and a more deadly 

 though more restricted source of danger is found in lofty electric lights, 

 against which the birds dash themselves during their nocturnal migra- 

 tions. The extinction of the Itytina and Great Auk, the almost com- 

 plete extirpation of the Bison, and the reduced numbers of the Walrus 

 are good examples of destruction wrought directly by the hand of man, 

 while in addition to such cases are the still more numerous instances of 

 the very perceptible decrease of animals once abundant. Species used 

 for food or otherwise of economic value suffer most, fashion affects some, 

 some are necessarily destroyed for the protection of man and his do- 

 mesticated animals, and others arc killed merely for sport. It has 

 taken comparatively lew years to so reduce the untold millions of the 

 1 1 . Mis. 224, pt. 2 39 609 



