THE NORTHERN SEA-COW 1 63 



another out of a herd, many wounded sea-cows were 

 lost : they died of their wounds but were not cast 

 upon the beach till too putrid for consumption, and 

 were thus wasted. One could even without a boat 

 swim up to and harpoon these witless creatures ! 

 Apparently but a single calf was produced at a 

 birth : here one sees another factor tending to early 

 extermination. Now the rhytina being badly 

 equipped at best for ocean life was compelled nolens 

 volens to approach the shore to feed on the sea- 

 weed : it was ill adapted to struggle with the storms 

 of winter, and even under normal conditions appears 

 to have been lean indeed in the spring. Whether, 

 therefore, the sea-cows were exterminated by hunters 

 who killed them for salting, or whether they were 

 merely frightened away from the marine meadows 

 so that they eventually starved to death (being 

 unable to dive in the ocean abyss for food) the 

 result was the same : they eventually became extinct. 

 A praiseworthy effort was made in 1755 by Pet. 

 Jakovlev, a man far in advance of his times, to save 

 the northern sea-cow. When prospecting for copper 

 on the Commander Group — being a mining engineer 

 — he found that the rhytina had already disappeared 

 from Copper Island. He, therefore, on November 

 27th, 1755, petitioned the authorities of Kamchatka 

 to protect the species : this being perhaps the first 

 suggestion for national game preservation, after- 

 wards so nobly developed in the United States, 



