The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1892-07-06
ANIMAL DIFFERENTIATION.
Boasts. Birds and Fish Sacrificed
to Commerce.
The Advance of Civilization Gradually
Wiping Food Creatures Out of Tx
istcnce-Some Startling Rev
Citations on tho Subject.


The destruction among the wild AMI
mails, birds and fish which has taken
place during the last fifty years could
not be better illustrated than it is in
the report jEet issued by Frederick
Lucas, of the%Smithsonian institution,
on the animals recently extinct, or
threatened with determination, repre-
sented in the National museum of the
United States. This most interesting
paper was suggested by the recent eff
forts made by American naturalists to
secure for their museums specimens of
animals, formerly quite common, which
were passing unnoticed out of eX-
lstencc. and of which in some cases it
was found that TO living example could
be obtained. This led to a national
stocktaling of the contents of the prin-
cipal museums, and incidentally to
review of the process of destruction as
it is now going on.
Some of the instances given seem al
most Incredible. Cod, perhaps the
most prolific fish used as q food, were
so completely destroyed on part Of the
New England coast that when the
waters were rcstocked with the produce
OF one hundred and thirty million eggs
the fishermen of Plymouth, in Niassa-
chusetts, sent specimens of the new
fish" to Gloucester to inquire what they
were. The work of the fishery COM
mission has already gone far to repair
the waste and destruction of the New
England fishermen, though IL strenuous
resistance has always been offered to
their efforts to open the passage for
shad and salmon to the spawning
grounds But the lobster ''cnnneries'
have so far depleted the apparently in
eXhaustibc stock that the waters adj
laccnt to the works are cleared of all
but those of the smallest size: and
even the great oyster grounds of Chesa-
peakc bay are showing signs of cx-
haustion, while halibut are growing
scarcer yearly. If the teeming repro
ductive power of the shad, the cod and
the oyster is unable to replace the havoc
made among them, it may safely be in
fcrred that the birds and beasts fare
even worse in the unequal struggle for
survival
1t is characteristic example of the
bias of the supreme Caucasian mind"
In its dealings with new animals that
when Columbus sailors were sent to
the top of the islet of the Alta Vela, in
the West Indian archipelago, to look
for the missing ships, when engaged in
the search for the mythical province of
Cipango, they Mt once marked their JOY
at finding eight sea wolves" byasnock-
ing them oil on the head. These "sea
wolves" were the West Indian seal,
formerly common all over the archi-
pclago and off the coast of Florida and
the gulf of Mexico, but now scarcely to
be found the on mainland coast at all.
1t recently occurred to certain persona
interested in natural history that moth
ing has been heard lately of the Cali
fornia walrus, huge and harmless
beast which was recently quite common
on the coast of Lower California. 1t
could hardly be supposed that herds of
creatures from fourteen to sixteen feet
long, and of equal or greater girth,
could disappear from the coast without
being missed, but such appears to have
been the case. Inland ''skin hunters
are destroying every animal which has
hide worth selling as fast as they
killed off the bison. The price hardly
makes n difference. Fifty cents per
skin has almost exterminated the pee
carries, the fierce little pigs which were
once so common in some of the counties
of Texas that the ground was covered
by their tracks and the air full of their
musky odor. Black tailed deer and an
telope fare no better, and from all ac-
counts the destruction of game in Brit
ish Columbia is no less rapid than across
the border.
Tho rrrout y-Ix,