THE AMERICAN BISON IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 41 



is no longer easily obtained, even in its most favored haunts. The grizzly bear is 

 believed to be rapidly approaching extinction outside of the Yellowstone Park, where, 

 owing to the assiduous care of those in charge, both it and the elk are still preserved. 

 The mountain sheep and goat, which inhabit less accessible regions, are becoming 

 more and more rare, while the beaver has retreated from a vast former area to such 

 secluded haunts that it may possibly survive longer than the other species which I 

 have just enumerated, and which are but a portion of those in imminent danger of 

 extinction. 



"Among the marine forms the manatee still exists, but although not exterminated, 

 it is in immediate danger of becoming so, like the California sea elephant, a gigantic 

 creature, often of greater bulk than the elephant, which has suffered the fate of com- 

 plete extinction within a few past years; at least it is uncertain whether a single 

 individual actually survives. The Pacific walrus, upon which a large native popula- 

 tion has always in great part depended for food and hides, is rapidly following the 

 sea elephant, and so on with other species. 



"This appalling destruction is not confined to mammals. Disregarding the birds of 

 song and plumage, to which the fashions of the milliner have brought disaster, 

 nearly all the larger and more characteristic American birds have suffered in the same 

 way as their four-footed contemporaries. The fate of the great auk is familiar to all 

 naturalists; but it is not so well known that the great California vulture and several 

 of the beautiful sea fowl of our coasts have met the same fate, and that the wild 

 pigeons, whose astonishing flocks were dwelt upon by Audubon and others in such 

 remarkable descriptions and which were long the wonder of American travelers, with 

 the less known, but magnificent ivory-billed woodpecker, and the pretty Carolina 

 parrakeet, have all become, if not extinct, among the rarest of birds. 



"Apart from the commercial value of its skins, the tax upon which has paid for 

 the cost of our vast Alaskan territory, the singular habits and teeming millions of the 

 northern fur seal have excited general interest even among those who are not inter- 

 ested in natural history. In 1849 these animals abounded from Lower California to 

 the lonely Alaskan isles, and it had been supposed that the precautions taken by the 

 Government for their protection on the breeding grounds of the Pribilof Islands 

 would preserve permanently the still considerable remnant which existed after the 

 purchase of Alaska and the destruction of the southern rookeries. But it is becom- 

 ing to,o evident that the greed of the hunters and the devastation caused by the 

 general adoption of the method of pursuing them in the open sea, destroying indis- 

 criminately mothers and offsprings, is going to bring these hopes to naught. 



"For most of these animals, therefore, it may be regarded as certain that, unless 

 some small remnant be preserved in a semidomesticated state, a few years will bring 

 utter extinction. The American of the next generation, when questioned about the 

 animals once characteristic of his country, will then be forced to confess that with 

 the exception of a few insignificant creatures, ranking as vermin, this broad conti- 

 nent possesses none of those species which once covered it, since the present genera- 

 tion will have completed the destruction of them all." 



During the eleven years that have elapsed since these paragraphs were written, the 

 writer has presented these considerations every session with the insistance it seemed 

 to him their importance deserved, until of late years he has had to feel that the 

 opportunity for saving this remnant, which was going more and more each year, had 

 in some respects finally gone. The great Kadiak bear, the largest carnivorous animal 

 upon the planet, since the report above quoted was written, has been driven farther 

 and farther into the interior, until a specimen is now unprocurable except by the 

 fitting out of a costly expedition, with the remote chance of obtaining a single adult, 

 though such an expedition will probably be more successful in procuring the young. 



Something much like this may be said of the giant moose and of other of our semi- 

 arctic fauna. The buffalo is so nearly gone, even from its shelter in the Yellowstone 

 National Park, that the stockade which the Institution erected there to secure and 

 "gentle" part of the few buffalo remaining is falling down without a single one ever 

 having been in it. Taught by the hopelessness of previous applications, the Secretary 

 has limited his request for this purpose to an immediate appropriation of $15,000, 

 with the now faint hope of securing some of the young of these vanishing creatures — 

 the great bear, the great moose, and the like. The Secretary is prepared to soon 

 abandon recommendations which have been urged for nearly ten years, not only 

 because they have been so far made in vain, but because some term must be set in 

 which they will have, too, evidently grown useless from the disappearance of the 

 animal races in question. 



As to the best means of securing the protection of these races, he has acquired in 

 this long effort some practical knowledge of the difficulties and of the simple but 

 effective remedy which can be applied. The subject is too large a one, however, to 



