Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1892-10-26
PAST ANIMAL LIFE.
NOE FIELDS OF SPECULATION AND
INVESTIGATION.

Birds and Beasts That Are Now Extinct.
Creatures That Have Served Their Pur-
pose Should Not Be Mourned Because
They Are No More.
Is il necessary TO go into paroxysms of
grief because certain animals are extinct,
or. as Mr.. Frederic A. Lucas, of the United
States National museum, expresses it, are
threatened with determinations" There
| are more men and fewer wild animals.
Mankind does not interfere so much with
the survival of the fittest as it hastens the
destruction of the entire fauna Formerly,
as Mr.. Lucas properly explains it. through
natural causes race after race of ami
mails has disappeared from the globe.
The determination of species by nature is
ordinarily slow. and the place of one is
taken by another, while the destruction
wrought by man is rapid, and the gaps he
creates remain untitled"
There was the great aux, an uncommonly
fat and awkward bird, that positively said
to hungry sailors, Come catch me, roast
and eat me-" Think of the godsend an
Alca impensis must have been, not alone
to primitive man, but to the early settlers
of Maine or Labrador. When Carriers
hardy mariners landed off Funk island in
1884 they made glorious feastings on the
great aux. Here were poor fellows, dying
of scurvy, getting back vital forces with
every mouthful of great aux they swal-
lowed. Are they to be begrudged because
they filled two boats full of birds rs if
they had been stones, so that, besides
them which we did eat fresh, every ship
did powder and salt five or six barrels Of
them"
Those Basque and other fishermen who
crossed the stormy seas for cod depended
on the luscious aux for their rations. The
number of the birds must have been count
less, because the aux was not prolific
breeder, laying only one egg At a time
Poor, stupid old bird, shaped by nature to
become fat and heavy, to find its food so
readily that it wanted no wings, and so
was killed!
1t might have lasted longer as a bird if
IL had not been for its feathers. Just as
soon it was question of securing the
Care fowls feathers, then it was indeed
bound TO disappear. Men went to their
best breeding ground, which was Funl, is
land, and slew auks by the millions. All
that was done was to strip the birds
! of their skins. and their bodies were left
to decay. Still the bird hung on as a
rara avis up to 1910, and then it was no
longer an inhabitant of the world any
more than the dodo Could any of Car
tiers sailors have thought that a skeleton
of a great aux, when offered for sale,
would create the widest excitement and
be worth 800, or a skin fetch $3.50, a
fair eggshell 81 500?
When Columbus sought Copango and
came across the West Indies his sailors
found along the shores the seal known to-
day as the Monachus tropicalis. \ distin-
guished characteristic of this seal was that
it placed little or no dependence on its hind
fippers. Nature had overlooked or sighted
their dev elopment. 1t was a seal without
proper coordination of movement. When
it wanted to go forward o;i the land it had
to arch its back something like caterpil-
lar, and then after prodigious effort its
progress was less than foot. OF course
with the advent of man this West Indian
was doomed.
The strange thing about this seal. so far
as the collector Is concerned, Is this
although Monachus tropicaiis was known
10 have existed for several centuries, not II
single perfec; specimen has fallen INTO the
hands Of he nataralists. Dampier in iGaI
told Of the abundance Of these seals t;tit
wrote The Spanis.T,3* DO Often Cunl:
hitier iucatID3 to T.#.-r Cyi OF their
fat Sir Hans Sloan, WHO te;I years ::.t,-:
Dampier visited tbs. E.Ih..-i.i:e WICK 49,
these islands were filled Will seals ',~1:-'
times fishers viii catch 10 IN =: I...
They try tn melt them and hT.':; 81 a.
oil for lamps on the ISLAND .'.r!:i,,'s &c.
last of these seals IL existing L .ln.. :.
some were taken as lat. u lt,-si. i.l:. ia I,-
years from now there w ID go ::.-r-..
Monachus tropicalis IL iI..~ sc.-.,. d.
purpose.
In the Swamp, in New Nor!. cit: t'-.-
quarter devoted to leather ua" n."S
casionally see two men l!FtInt, '.-."H ;"---..
what looks like heavy woc...- I-a.-.-
only of greater width than IL -; I..s',.
trees. The material is stiff ana hard, 80
if you strike IL you can appreciate hos.
hard it Is. 1t is walrus hid. use. f.:
buffing wheels, and it is about three ir.c.f,-
thick. The waIrus of the northern Pacif.-
is being eXtermiuated for its tuSss. E,'s,.
and oil While whaling was profitable t..
walrus was passed over, but today II il
too valuable. On the Atlantic side III"
chances of the walrus still existing, are
better, because it is much harder 10 get,
but when the Pacific walrus becomes RAE
the Atlantic one will certainly be sought
for
Little or nothing is known today about
the rytina, or arctic sea cow-the Rytlna
gigas 1t was related to the manatee, or
dugong. only it lived far north. 1t was
big creature, certainly twenty-five or thir-
ty feet long, with "a girth of from fifteen to
twenty feet, and probably an adult would
weigh four tons 1t had a ridiculously
small head and was toothless- Its skin
was supposedly tough, not thick, but hard
enough to resist the edge of an ak 1t was
gregarious and lived at the mouths of riv-
ers, pasturing OH seaweed. When Behring
Q74D was in Kamchatka he saved his
crew from scurvy by taking sea cows II
was a creature so easy to kill that exter-
mination soon took place.
On Copper island, where this sea COW
was once plentiful, they had become rare
in 1868. The last one was probably killed
ON Behring island in the last quarter Of
the Eighteenth century. Some years ago.
at the instigation of the United States Ma