The Arizona sentinel., 1892-11-12
ANIMAL DIFFERENTIATION.
Beasts, Birds and Fish Sacrificed
 to Commerce.
The Advance of Civilization Gradually Wiping Food Creatures Out of Ex- istence-Some Startling Rev
 citations on the Subject.

The destruction among the wild ani- mals, birds and fish which has taken place during the last fifty years could not be better illustrated than it is in the report just issued by Frederick Lucas, of the Smithsonian institution, on the animals recently extinct, or threatened with extermination, 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- istence, and of which in some cases it was found that no living example could
 be obtained. This led to a national
 stocktaking 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 restocked with the produce of one hundred and thirty million eggs the fishermen of Plymouth, in Massa- 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 a strenuous resistance has always been offered to their efforts to open the passage for shad. and salmon to the spawning grounds. But the lobster ''canneries" have so far depleted the apparently in- cXhaustible stock that the waters ad jacent to the works are cleared of all but those of the smallest size; and even the great oyster grounds of Chesa- peake bay are showing signs of ex- 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- ferred that the birds and beasts fare even worse in the unequal struggle for survival.
 It is characteristic example of the bias of the supreme Caucasian mind" in it's 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 at once marked their joy at finding "eight sea wolves by knock ir1or fhoT1o oil tho hood Thoco GGcoo wolves were the West Indian seal, formerly common all over the archi- pelago and off the coast of Florida and the gulf of Mexico, but now scarcely to be found the on mainland coast at all. It recently occurred to certain persons interested in natural history that noth- ing has been heard lately of the Cali fornia walrus, a huge and harmless beast which was recently quite common on the coast of Lower California. It 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 a 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.