i;o DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



the Duchess of Sutherland's estates in Sutherland, during 

 the three years from March 1831 to March 1834, a reward 

 of five shillings offered for each head was paid on 263 Otters. 



THE BADGER OR BROCK 



In Scotland the decadence of the Badger (Miles miles] 

 is to be accounted for by a multitude of influences which told 

 severally and directly against it. It was hunted for sport, it 

 was caught for baiting, it was destroyed for its destructive- 

 ness, it was killed for food, and its skins were a marketable 

 commodity. Of all these direct influences the value of its 

 skin was probably that which least influenced its welfare, for 

 in Scotland the skins never created any great demand, and 

 I mention the Badger here simply because the skins, which 

 sold at some $s. or 6.?. each, made an occasional appearance 

 at the Dumfries Fur Fair up to about the middle of the 

 nineteenth century. 



The case of the Badger, however, is typical of most of 

 the fur-bearing natives of Scotland, and in concluding an 

 account of the influence of the trade in skins upon the 

 Scottish fauna, I would emphasize again that skins alone 

 seldom formed the whole object of the persecution to which 

 their possessors were subjected, but that other and varied 

 objects, and especially the protection of game and minor 

 domestic stock, combined to intensify the pursuit of most of 

 the fur-bearers. In Scotland there is no instance of that 

 single-mindedness arid intensity of destruction which led to 

 the slaughter by single ship's crews of 57,000 Fur Seals in 

 1800 during the short season in South Georgia, and of at 

 least 74,000 in Australia in 1804, an d which on account 

 of their skins has almost exterminated Fur Seals in the 

 Southern Hemisphere. In Scotland motives have been 

 more complex, but the results if less striking have been no 

 less fatal to the races of fur-bearing animals. 



DESTRUCTION FOR OIL 



In discussing the creatures destroyed for their fat or oil, 

 we are reminded once more that a rigid classification of the 

 motives which have led to the slaughter of animals conveys 

 only part of the truth. While the fat of many a creature was 



