EXTERMINATION IN ANIMAL LIFE. 407 



23,848,780. The total number of licences issued in these States 

 was 503,049. " In other words, a little more than half a million 

 persons were licensed to hunt, of whom only 3,043, or six-tenths 

 of 1 per cent., were hunting outside their own States."* 



Guillemard writes that on Masafuera and Juan Fernandez 

 Islands, off the coast of South America, a few skins of the fur 

 Seals are still taken, " and in bygone days the South Shetland, 

 Crczet, and Falkland Islands were the resort of countless 

 thousands of these animals. But they are now nearly extinct, 

 and almost every Seal-skin that finds its way into the London 

 market is obtained upon one or other of the islands rented by 

 the Alaska Commercial Company." t 



The inevitable destruction of the Alligator "fishing" in 

 Florida is being hastened by the robbing of the reptile nests of 

 their eggs. According to Dr. E. D. Cope: "Facts recently 

 gathered by the Fish Commission show that the reptiles cannot 

 long escape practical extermination." Between the vears 1880 

 and 1894 it has been estimated that 2,500,000 Alligators were 

 killed in Florida. \ So persistently has the Wood-Duck (Aix 

 sponsa) been pursued that, according to Mr. Wells W. Cooke, in 

 some sections it has been practically exterminated. Even in 

 States in which it still breeds commonly, as in Delaware and 

 Maryland on the Atlantic Coast, and in Illinois in the Mississippi 

 Valley, public sentiment fails to recognize the importance of 

 adequately protecting the bird, and the laws still permit it to be 

 destroyed late in the spring. As a result the Wood-Duck is con- 

 stantly diminishing in numbers, and soon is likely to be known 

 only from books or by tradition.§ 



If we transport ourselves from Africa, the once paradise for 

 Antelopes, to Australia, where marsupials hold a corresponding 

 sway, we see the same process of destruction, the same inevitable 

 extinction in progress. What availeth numbers when, at Peak 

 Downs alone, as we learn from Carl Lumholtz, one of the sheep- 

 owners told him that in the course of eighteen months he had 

 killed 64,000 of these animals, especially Wallabies (Macropus 



* ' U.S. Dept. Agric. Bur. Biol. Surv.' Circular No. 54, p. 14 (1906). 



f ' Cruise of the Marchesa,' second edition, p. 142. 



X ' Ann. Rep. Smithsonian Instit. for 1898,' p. 171 (1900). 



§ 'U. S. Dept. Agric. Biol. Surv.' Bull. No. 26, p. 8 (1906). 



