CONSERVING WILDLIFE — JACKSON 251 



some 25 years later. In northern Africa, in the mountains of the 

 Algerian Sahara, the red gazelle has probably vanished for all time. 



Turning now to Australia and the South Sea Islands, those giant 

 flightless birds, the moas, disappeared from the feathered fauna of 

 New Zealand islands, probably between A. D. 950 and 1350. Un- 

 doubtedly the last remnants vanished through the agency of man, 

 although ancient Maori tradition and legends refer to the moa as 

 burnt up by the "fires of Tamaten" in times long past, which may refer 

 to its destruction by volcanic action. Archey (1941) recognizes 19 

 species of these birds belonging to 6 genera. In Australia itself the 

 little plains rat-kangaroo has not been seen since 1843, and the mar- 

 supial anteater vanished in 1923. 



Many forms of wildlife have become extinct in the Western Hemi- 

 sphere. Some of the earlier of these to vanish were insular forms, 

 such as Gosse's macaw from Jamaica, about 1800. The Cuban tri- 

 colored macaw became extinct in 1864, chiefly through utilization for 

 food. The history of Guadeloupe Island, one of the Leeward Islands, 

 portrays the extinction of three bird species, the yellow-winged green 

 parrot, the purple Guadeloupe parakeet, and the Guadeloupe macaw. 

 Strangely enough, an island of like name in the eastern Pacific Ocean, 

 Guadalupe Island, has witnessed the extirpation of the Guadalupe 

 caracara and probably the Guadalupe towhee and the Guadalupe rock 

 wren. 



Several races of mammals formerly inhabiting North America — 

 in fact, parts of the United States — have passed into the ranks of the 

 vanished. The big dark buffalo of the northeastern United States, 

 the Pennsylvania bison, was last known in Pennsylvania in 1801. 

 The Maine giant mink, nearly twice the size of our ordinary minks, 

 that lived along the seacoasts of Maine and Nova Scotia, became ex- 

 tinct in 1860. The eastern puma, or cougar, was gone by about 1885. 

 Of our grizzly bears, the first to disappear was the Texas race (1890), 

 followed shortly by the Plains grizzly (1895), and the Tejon grizzly 

 of the arid southwestern region of California (1898). Although the 

 taxonomic status of the grizzly bears is not entirely clear, it is, never- 

 theless, certain that many races of these mammals are recognizable and 

 that many of these have disappeared. Among these extirpated forms 

 may be mentioned the California grizzly bear (1922), Sacramento 

 Valley grizzly, California coast grizzly, Arizona grizzly, Black Hills 

 grizzly, Navaho grizzly, Mount Taylor grizzly, Utah grizzly, and 

 Chelan grizzly. Even such an insignificant mammal as the Gull 

 Island meadow mouse could not escape extinction when its habitat on 

 Great Gull Island, at the entrance of Long Island Sound, New York, 

 was covered by earth moved in grading the island for fortifications 

 some time before 1898. Another inconspicuous small mammal, the 



