1048 The Extermination of the Great Northern Sea-Cow. [Dec. 
prove conclusively—as I have published even the minutest de- 
tails, any one can make up his mind as to the weight of the 
evidence—that the animal seen by the men was noć a sea-cow, 
but that, in all probability, it was a stray female narwhal. To 
this Nordenskiöld has had no other reply than a reprint of his 
former assertion, without even an attempt to give any further 
details or to refute my arguments. The only new point in his 
answer is an effort to:‘throw discredit on the accuracy of Sauer's 
“ Account of Billing’s Expedition in the Years 1785 to 1794, 
in which Sauer expressly states that the last sea-cow was killed 
at Bering Island in 1768, twenty-seven years after the island had 
been discovered by man. Ina paper published in the Bulletin 
of the American Geographical Society* I have already been able 
_ to vindicate Sauer. In the present paper I shall, therefore, only 
try to demonstrate how easy it is to account for the rapid ex 
termination of this huge animal, if we take all the known facts 
into consideration. To any one familiar with the literature 0n 
` the subject such an undertaking might be supposed to be 
superfluous, so well has the task been performed long ago by 
the great Russian scientists already referred to; but I may pe 
haps be able to elucidate the subject a little further,—@ labor 
apparently not quite unnecessary, in view of the following = 
markable statement of Professor Nordenskidld (Bull. Amer 
Geogr. Soc., 1885, p. 281): “It cannot very well be sup 
that in a sea so rarely visited in the last century as the norther | 
part of the Pacific Ocean the last specimen of the genus Ry jai r 
should have been slain by the harpoon of the hunter. I€ i 
imagine that the hardly accessible coasts of Bering and ge 
Islands have been very rarely visited by hunters since ue 
day, 1741.” As will be seen from the following pages, t me : 
was no need of “imagining” anything of th 
e kind, when a 
j $ 
covered the then uninhabited island which afterwar®? a 
its name from Bering, who died there shortly after. ie 
vivors of the expedition wintered on that island, and K 
landed there they saw the first living sea-cows Ryun 
beheld by white men. 
t 1886, No. 4, pp. 317-328.. 
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