114 THE EXTINCTION OF ANIMALS 



The gigantic rhytina referred to elsewhere is an interest- 

 ing illustration or example of the complete extinction of a 

 mammal within the memory of man. The Russians found 

 it in Alaska on the Bering Sea and killed it for food and 

 for pleasure. The end soon came, and one of the most re- 

 markable of all animals, a giant thirty feet long, has passed 

 out of existence and is known only by a few skeletons and 

 bones in the museums. Many other mammals will meet 

 this fate ; the fur seal will not outlive the twentieth cen- 

 tury, while the great walrus, so valued for its tusks, will 

 also become extinct. 



Such will be the fate of the narwhal, the white whale, 

 and the seals of Newfoundland coast that are followed by 

 fleets of sealers who kill them by hundreds, just as the 

 fishermen shot the great auk by the boatload and exter- 

 minated a bird that is now one of the rarest of curiosities, 

 specimens being valued at hundreds of dollars, even an 

 Qgg ranking with precious stones in value. 



Twenty years ago the sea elephant was not uncommon 

 on the Lower California coast, but the sealers gradually 

 killed it off, until the government was forced to send an 

 expedition to obtain what was left that it might at least 

 have specimens of skins and skeletons. In this way doubt- 

 less the last sea elephant on the west North American 

 coast was destroyed. In 1850 a large herd of these fine 

 animals that attained a length of twenty-five or thirty feet 

 held sway at Santa Catalina Harbor — a fiord on the south- 

 western side of the island ; they were killed off by Captain 

 Scammon and his crew of whalers. The extinction of the 

 South Pacific sea elephant is in progress at the present 

 time, and a few years more and they will be but a memory, 



