The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-09-18
MAN THE ExrERM1NAToR.

Ah@hAN Lili4 AIsN lIAlkNlIANSAl lOINs
 Animals That are Extinct or are Be
 coming so-The Birds and Beasts
 Slaughtered for Fashon's Sake-Ef-
 feet of Mans Presence Upon Some
 Species-Causes of the Extermina-
 tion of Some Birds and Animals
 Washington, Sept. 5.--Professor Frederic A. Lucas, the assistant cura- tor of the Department of Comparative Anatomy of the United States National Museum, has made very interesting study of the animals of America and other countries which have become e&- tinct within the last ten or twenty years, as we'll as those threatened with extinction in the near future.
 Tt is not perhaps generally realized" said Professor Lucas, "how extensive and how rapid are the changes that are taking place in almost the entire fau- ma of the world through the agency of man. Of course, changes have perpet- ually taken place in the past through the operation of natural causes, and race after race of animals has disap- peared from the globe, but there is this wide difference between the methods of nature and man; that the extermina- ton of a 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 ere ates remain unified"
 The cause of mans slaughter of ami mals is in general the desire for their various products, but there are other simple and destructive forces at work, For instance, the erection of telegraph wires, especially in sparsely wooded regions, has proved very destructive to birds, and a deadly, though restricted, source of danger is found in elevated electric lights, against which birds dash themselves during their nocturnal migrations. The extinction of the sea cow and great aux, the almost com plete extinction Of the buffalo, and the seal, and the greatly reduced numbers of the Walrus are attributable to the hand of man. Those species used for decoration, or having an economic val ue, suffer the most. The fashion in wearing apparel affects some and oth- CTS are necessarily destroyed for the protection of man. Year by year hali- but is growing scarcer and Scarcer, the lobster canneries find difficulty in ob- taining necessary supplies, and there IS already dearth of oysters in the once seemingly inexhaustible waters of Chesapeake Bay The Fish commits sion is doing 8 good work in keeping alive some of the species. The Atlan- tic salmon have been greatly reduced k in numbers, and the same is true of shad in many localities. The shad and the cod are receiving the attention of the Fish commission and they will be kept in existence by artificial culture.
 One reason for the growing scarcity of some species is found in the belief held by the great mass of people that Because some species of animals ex- ist in large numbers, the supply IS un- limited, and those most directly inter- ested in the preservation of game are usually the most bitter opponents of any measures for their own protection. The lobster catchers and dealers object to laws prohibiting the capture and sale of Holsters under a certain size. The Potomac fishermen complain be- cause they are not allowed to prevent shad and herring from ascending to the spawning ground. Nevertheless wherever laws have been put into force the result has been within a compara-
  cies that it has been of the greatest benefit pecuniarily and otherwise to those who protested in the first ih> stance.
 The dictates of fashion are the cause of the destruction of fur bearing mann rnals for clothing and of birds for mil linery purposes. In 1885 peccaries were so abundant in certain parts of Texas trot 1c fn 10 seen everywhere About this time hog skin goods being in favor a price of fifty cents each was offered for pee cary hides, with a result that five years afterward peccaries had become prac- tically exterminated. This shows how short a time IS required to cause the practical extermination of a species in a community. A yearly record of the sales of some London firms would indi- cate clearly the whims of fashion. Some of the present tendencies are shown by the fact that 3G,0o0 monkeys skins and 250,000 Australian opossums were disposed of at a single sale. Among the items at one sale of birds were 6,0o0 birds of paradise, 5000 rmpe- van pheasants, 360, 900 skins from India, and 100000 humming birds. The num- Der of birds disposed of on this one oc- casion exceeded that contained in all the collections, public and private. of the United States. The fashionable sealskin cloaks demand a yearly slaughter of about 1S5000 fur seals To supply the world with ivory for 8 year necessitates the death of 100000 ele- phants If these were placed in single file they would make a procession over one hundred and eighty miles long. Henry M Stanley makes a still more extraordinary statement. He said that the death of an elephant was but a portion of the price paid for ivory, eve ry pound of which had cost the life of a man, woman or child, while every twenty tusks had been obtained at the price of the destruction of district, with all it's people, villages and planta- tions.
 The externination of the buffalo over large areas of country was in the beginning partly matter of necessity in order that the land might be ren-