OSBORN AND ANTHONY — CLOSE OF AGE OF MAMMALS 
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furs, came to the fur counters to the extent of only seventy-six speci- 
mens, and this is a sad commentary on the disappearance of this 
animal. Inasmuch as the animal is protected over most of its known 
range, some of these specimens were doubtless taken illegally, and 
unless some radical change for the better takes place, it will not be 
long before the fur dealers must do without the sea otter. 
One of the most widely sold furs is one which was formerly worth 
but a few cents and was seldom skinned by anyone but boys. We refer 
to the American or Virginia opossum {Didelphys virginiana), Tvhich, 
since it has come into fashion, has been skinned to the number 
of 9,700,000. The Australian marsupials have known to their cost 
this increased demand for opossum, and the drain upon the wild life 
of Australia is shown by the total of over four million for the so-called 
“Australian opossum,’ — several species of small marsupials {Pha- 
langer) going under this name — a total of more than one million three 
hundred thousand skins for the ring-tailed opossum {Phalanger and 
Pseudochirus) , and more than two hundred and eight thousand skins 
for the koala {Phascolarctus cinereus), or, as it is known in the fur trade, 
the wombat. This latter animal has a skin almost worthless, when 
considered from the viewpoint of beauty and durability, but the fur 
traders have not passed up even so poor a fur bearer. 
The Australians have been anxious to conserve their wild life and 
have shown this in their restriction of the number of native mammals 
which they have allowed scientific expeditions to take, but, on the 
other hand, their trappers have shipped out through the principal 
ports literally ton upon ton of baled skins, and whole regions have 
been stripped of the mammal life, so that Mr. W. H. Dudley Le Souef 
says some of the species have been brought down so close to the danger 
point that a year of drought will exterminate them completely over 
large areas. 
The figures just cited give a little insight into what the fur trade is 
doing toward bringing about the Close of the Age of Mammals. In 
a few years some of the mammals now sought by the trappers will be 
killed off to a point where they will not repay trapping — the numbers 
taken being insufficient to repay for the expenditure of energy. Mam- 
mals are frequently subject to the attacks of different parasites, and 
are very susceptible to the spread of different epidemics. When the 
balance of nature has been disturbed and a species is brought to the 
point where the struggle for existence is precarious, it may happen that 
a species will disappear completely; in other words, be exterminated 
