490 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 
‘sealing.’ In 1859 19 vessels sailing from British ports killed 148 whales ; 
in 1881 12 vessels killed 48 whales; last year 6 Dundee vessels killed but 15, 
and the year before that but 3. The whalers sailing from Newfoundland 
ports killed 1,275 whales in 1904, 892 in 1905, and only 429 in 1906. 
At the present time certain Norwegian whaling companies have been 
for the last few years actively at work in the Shetlands, and are killing off 
as fast as they can the common rorqual (Balenoptera musculus L.), the lesser 
rorqual (B. rostrata), Sibbald’s rorqual (B. sibbaldi Gray), the cachalot 
(Physeter macrocephalus L.), the humped-back whale (Megaptera boops 
L.), and, when they can reach him, the Atlantic right whale (Balena 
mysticetus L.). These are killed primarily for their blubber, but the 
economy of the factories rivals that of the Chicago pork packing industries. 
Nothing is wasted, the flesh is made into sausages, which are readily eaten 
in Central Europe, and the bones are ground up to make manure. No animal 
which produces but few young can withstand such persistent and organised 
attacks on the part of man, and I fear, before many years are passed, 
many species of whale will be extinct. At the present moment the two right 
whales seem almost on the verge of extinction, and Balana mysticetus will 
probably go before B. australis. Nothing shows this more clearly than the 
price of whalebone, which has gone up in the last eighty-four years from 
561. per ton to 2,100J. per ton, or from 12cs. a pound to $4.90, and in 
some years to $5.80 a pound. The number of pounds on sale in the 
Jnited States has dropped from 2,916,500 in 1851 to 96,600 in 1906. With 
the whales will disappear the whale-lice and the whole of the very interest- 
ing parasitic fauna which inhabit their vast interiors. 
The disappearance of the large game from enormous tracts of country 
in Africa is too well known to delay us. The elephant, except where pre- 
served in the Litzikama Forest, near Mossel Bay, and in the Addo Bush, 
near Port Elizabeth, is exterminated south of the Limpopo. The price of 
ivory again is a measure of the nearness of its extinction. The best 
pieces, which are used for billiard balls, have risen in price from 551. 
a cwt. in 1882 to an average of 1001. a cwt. in 1908. The common and 
the brindled gnu (Connochoetes taurinus) are fated to follow the extinct 
quagga. The blesbok (Damaliscus albifrons), formerly found in thousands 
in Cape Colony, the Transvaal, and Bechuanaland, is now very rare and 
seems doomed. The giraffe has long been driven out from South Africa, 
though it still roams over large tracts of country in East and Central 
Africa. 
Perhaps the most striking case of the disappearance of a mammalian 
fauna is that presented in Western Australia. Here many districts are 
now said to be entirely devoid of indigenous mammals, and this depletion 
is in the main an affair of only the last thirty years, and many of the 
local extinct forms are still remembered by the older natives and colonists. 
Mr. Shortridge, a collector who has worked for some years in South-west 
and Western Australia, writes in a letter: ‘ The entire disappearance of 
so many species over such large tracts of country is generally considered 
to be due to some epidemic perhaps brought into the land by introduced 
animals. It is to be noted that they have died out chiefly in the dry 
regions, where, except for the introduction of sheep, there has been very 
little alteration in the natural conditions. Rabbits, although already very 
numerous in the Centre and South-east, have not as yet found their way 
to the North-west.’ Amongst the mammals which have almost, if not 
quite, disappeared from West Australia are the banded wallaby (Lago- 
strophus fasciatus), the hare wallaby (Lagochestes hirsutus), the rat- 
kangaroos (Potorous gilberti and P. platyops). The indigenous rats and 
mice of Australia are disappearing even faster than the marsupials, aad 
it seems probable that many will not be heard of again, 
