EXTIRPATION OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 
119 
ing ponds for fish, and would thus, without further cost, yield 
a larger supply of human food than can at present be obtained 
from them even at a great expenditure of capital and labor in 
agricultural operations. The additions which might be made 
to the nutriment of the civilized world by a judicious admin¬ 
istration of the resources of the waters, would allow some 
restriction of the amount of soil at present employed for agri¬ 
cultural purposes, and a corresponding extension of the area 
of the forest, and would thus facilitate a return to primitive 
geographical arrangements which it is important partially to 
restore. 
Extirpation of Aquatic Animals. 
It does not seem probable that man, with all his rapacity 
and all his enginery, will succeed in totally extirpating any 
salt-water fish, but he has already exterminated at least one 
marine warm-blooded animal—Steller’s sea cow—and the 
walrus, the sea lion, and other large amphibia, as well as the 
principal fishing quadrupeds, are in imminent danger of ex¬ 
tinction. Steller’s sea cow, Ehytina Stelleri , was first seen by 
Europeans in the year 1741, on Bering’s Island. It was a 
huge amphibious mammal, weighing not less than eight thou¬ 
sand pounds, and appears to have been confined exclusively to 
the islands and coasts in the neighborhood of Bering’s Strait. 
Its flesh was very palatable, and the localities it frequented 
were easily accessible from the Russian establishments in 
Kamtschatka. As soon as its existence and character, and the 
abundance of fur animals in the same waters, weie made 
known to the occupants of those posts by the return of the 
survivors of Bering’s expedition, so active a chase was com¬ 
menced against the amphibia of that region, that, in the course 
of twenty-seven years, the sea cow, described by Steller as 
extremely numerous in 1741, is believed to have been com¬ 
pletely extirpated, not a single individual having been seen 
since the year 1768. The various tribes of seals in the !Noith¬ 
em and Southern Pacific, the walrus and the sea otter, are 
already so reduced in numbers that they seem destined soon 
