402 



EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



the Falklands in 1833, the animal was still common there, but 

 its absurdly tame habits, he foresaw, would lead to its early 

 extermination. Indeed, he mentions that the Gauchos would 

 capture them by holding out a bit of meat to a fox in one hand 

 and stab the animal with a knife held in the other, when the fox 

 came within reach. 



Such an abundant and soft-furred animal, thus easily caught, 

 attracted the notice of John Jacob Astor, then active in the 

 fur trade, who in 1839 sent men to the Falklands to collect 

 pelts, and great numbers of them were taken. Hamilton 

 Smith mentions seeing quantities of them in Astor's warehouse 

 at New York. Renshaw even says that the extermination of 

 the species from East Falkland may date from this exploita- 

 tion; at all events by 1863 they were already extinct in the 

 eastern part of East Falkland. When, later, the Scotch set- 

 tlers started raising sheep on the Falklands, the foxes seem to 

 have developed a taste for mutton and would kill sheep by 

 attacking one or two or three together. As a result a poisoning 

 campaign was undertaken and many were destroyed. In 1870 

 Byng wrote to the Zoological Society that they were almost 

 exterminated, and the last one is said to have been killed in 

 1876 at Shallow Bay, West Falkland. 



Antarctic wolf (Dusicyon australis) 



