ANIMALS RECENTLY EXTINCT. (!ll 



their favorite haunts could be readily picked out by the peculiar musky 

 odor characteristic of these little animals. Shortly after this date, hog- 

 skin goods being in favor, a price of fifty cents each was ottered for 

 Peccary hides, with the result that by 1890 the Peccaries had become 

 practically exterminated. 



A yearly record of the sales of some London firms would indicate 

 quite clearly the whims of fashion, some of the present tendencies being 

 shown by the fact that 30,000 monkey skins and 250,000 Australian 

 " opossums" were disposed of at a single sale. Birds are auctioned off 

 in still more extraordinary numbers and among the items of one sale were 

 0,000 Birds of Paradise, 5,000 Impeyan Pheasants, 300,000 assorted skins 

 from India, and 400,000*LTummingbirds, the number of birds disposed of 

 at this one auction exceeding that contained in all the collections, public 

 and private, of the United States, while one dealer in 1887 sold no less 

 than 2,000,000 bird-skins. The fashionable seal-skin sacque demands a 

 yearly slaughter of about 185,000 fur seals, but these figures seem small 

 when compared with those representing the catch of the plebeian hair- 

 seals, 875,000 of these being annually killed for oil and leather. 



At the principal localities where the northern Fur Seal occurs the kill- 

 ing is regulated by law and there is little danger of the animal being 

 exterminated, but the southern species has been so recklessly hunted 

 at its breeding places on the coast of South America and in the Ant- 

 arctic seas that a southern sealing voyage is now very much in the 

 uature of a lottery, and few or no animals are now to be taken at local- 

 ities that formerlv Yielded thousands of skins. 



To supply the world with ivory for a year necessitates the death of 

 100,000 elephants, and if these were placed in single file they would 

 make a procession over 180 miles long. If, however, Stauley is cor- 

 rect, the death of the elephant is but a portion of the price paid for 

 ivory, of which every pound weight has cost the life of a "man, woman 

 or child," while "every twenty tusks have been obtained at the price 

 of a district, with all its peoples, villages and plantations." 



The extermination of the buffalo over large areas of country was 

 partly a matter of necessity in order that the land might be rendered 

 available for stock-raising ; the wolf and coyote are poisoned for the 

 preservation of sheep, and for a like cause the Tasmauian thylacine has 

 been hunted to the verge of extinction. Following this necessary de- 

 struction comes the unnecessary or unpremeditated but unavoidable 

 loss caused by the domesticated animals which have replaced the origi- 

 nal possessors of the soil. Such for example is the more or less com- 

 plete extirpation of rattlesnakes that follows the introduction of hogs, 

 and although this is a consummation most devoutly to be wished for, 

 it is none the less a case in point. 



The sentimental importation of birds by colonists is another piece of 

 mischief, and is proving very detrimental to the interesting avifauna 

 of New Zealand and the Sandwich Islands, where, as in our own coun- 

 try, the English sparrow is largely instrumental in crowding out native 



