378 EXTINCTION OF THE BISON AND WHALES 



practically exterminated, the merciless hunt has now been 

 turned on to the wilder and less valuable Finback whales 

 or Finners. In these days of steam and electric light the 

 Arctic night is robbed of its terrors, and the whale chase 

 goes on very fast. The shot harpoon was invented in 

 1870 by Sven Foyn, a Norwegian, and is the most 

 deadly and extraordinary weapon ever devised by man 

 for the. pursuit of helpless animals. It is this invention 

 (a commercial, not a scientific, discovery !) which has, in 

 conjunction with swift steamships, rendered the destruc- 

 tion of whales a matter of ease and deadly certainty. 

 It is this which is being used on the Irish as on the 

 Scandinavian coast, resulting in the pollution of the air 

 and water by the carcases of the slaughtered beasts from 

 which the oil has been extracted. This revolting butchery, 

 without foresight or intelligence, is carried on solely for 

 the satisfaction of human greed, and apparently will be 

 stopped only by the extinction of the yet remaining whales. 

 In forty years in the middle of last century the whale fishery 

 of the United States yielded 300,000 whales to 20,000 

 voyages, and a value of sixty-five million pounds sterling 

 in baleen and oil. It is calculated that in the thousand 

 years during which man has hunted the gfreat whales not 

 less than a million individuals have been captured. Man's 

 skill and capacity have now become such that he will soon 

 have cleared the ocean of these wonderful creatures, since, 

 like the bison, the whales cannot persist when harried and 

 interfered with beyond a certain limited degree. 



It appears that the curious musk ox which now lives 

 on the fringe of the Arctic circle, and in the glacial period 

 existed in the Thames Valley, is doomed. There (as in 

 similar instances in other lands), the comparatively harm- 

 less savage race of men (in this case the Eskimo), whose 

 weapons did not enable them seriously to threaten the 

 existence of the animals around them, have now obtained 



