DESTEUCTION OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 103 



crease in the weaker and more defenceless fisli on whicli they 

 feed, had he not been as hostile to them also as to their perse- 

 cutors. 



Destruction of Aquatic Animals. 



It does not seem probable that man, with all his rapacity and"" 

 all his enginery, will succeed in totally extirpating any salt-water 

 fish, but he has already exterminated at least one marine warm- 

 blooded animal — Steller's sea-cow — and the walrus, the sea-lion, 

 and other large amphibia, as well as the principal fishing quadru- 

 peds, are in imminent danger of extinction. Steller's sea-cow — 

 Rliytina SteUeri — was first seen by Europeans in the year 1741 

 on Behring's Island. It was a huge, amphibious mammal weigh- 

 ing not less than eight thousand pounds, and appears to have 

 been confined exclusively to the islands and coasts in the neigh- 

 borhood' of Behring's Strait. Its flesh was very palatable, and 

 the localities it frequented were easily accessible from the Russian 

 estabhshments in Kamschatka. As soon as its existence and char- 

 acter, and the abundance of fur animals in the same waters, were 

 made known to the occupants of those posts by the return of the 

 survivors of Behring's expedition, so active a chase was com- 

 menced against the amphibia of that region, that, in the course 

 of twenty-seven years, the sea-cow, described by Steller as ex- 

 tremely numerous in 1Y41, is beheved to have been completely 

 extirpated, not a single individual having been seen since the 

 year 1768.* -The various tribes of seals f in the Northern and 

 Southern Pacific, the walrus :j: and the sea-otter, are already so 



* According to the Voyage of the Vega, a sea-cow was killed in the Arctic 

 Sea in 1854, and another in 1868. 



f The most valuable variety of fur seal, formerly abundant in all cold lati- 

 tudes, is stated to have been completely exterminated in the Southern hemi- 

 sphere, and to be now found only on one or two small islands of the Aleutian 

 group. In 1867 more than 700,000 seal-skins were imported into Great Brit- 

 ain, and at least 600,000 seals are estimated to have been taken in 1870. These 

 numbers do not include the seals killed by the Esquimaux and other rude 

 tribes. According to the estimates made in 1880, the total annual captm-e of 

 the common fur seal is now about 1,000,000 individuals, the value of the oil 

 alone amounting to $1,250,000, independently of the skins. 



X In 1868 a few American ships engaged in the North Pacific whale-fishery 

 turned their attention to the walrus, and took from 200 to 600 each. In 1869 

 other whalers engaged in the same pursuit, and in 1870 the American fleet i» 



