Both Africa and America have presented fields for indiscriminate slaughter. In the former continent, where once there roamed great herds of antelope, countless buffaloes and elephants the slaughter has been so great since the middle of the 19th century as to leave many of these denizens of plain and forest extremely rare if not altogether extinct. The search for hides was perhaps the strongest destructive force; but the European hunters for "big game" and their followers have done much in the same direction. The mountain zebra, the quagga and various species of antelope are examples of this; while the giraffe to escape entire extinction has retired to almost inaccessible regions in the Kalahari Desert and northward.
As for America, with her long list of lost species, most people are more or less acquainted with the efforts that have been made (and sometimes with signal success), within the past few years, to save, by protective legislation, such of her native birds as are still found, and to prevent the wholesale slaughter of her wild denizens of field and forest.. The best known example of extinction is furnished by the bison (q.v.), which roamed in vast herds over the grass lands, until it was destroyed by hide-gatherers; so that now there are no wild bison except one small herd, carefully protected by law, dwelling beyond the North Saskat chewan River. In 1903 it was estimated that only 34 wild bison were left in the United States, and about 600 in Canada; and even these remnants had more or less degen erated from the superb original type of the plains. Such large animal species liv ing under strenuous conditions and necessarily breeding slowly, urgently require protection at this time. The .unremitting warfare against all the animal kind that began with the de struction of the great land turtles and moas in prehistoric times, now extends to the remot est places of the earth. With the arming of every savage tribe, and with shooting expedi tions often organized on a large scale and even carried out under the guise of scientific explo ration, all large animal types are to-day threat ened with a speedy extinction. A typical case of natural restriction accelerated by man is that of the muskox (9.v.). Circumarctic in the Pleistocene this curious animal, yielding in quantity a strong underwool with a texture as fine as silk, is now confined solely to the tree less arctic wastes of North America and the islands to the north. Cut off by the white hunter everywhere to the south, the Eskimo rabbit-catchers of the far north, always hard on the muskox, are now killing with modern rifles the northern remnants of the original herd. The American sea-elephant and the monk-seal are also practically gone. The long lists of birds, from the great auk and the "passenger-pigeon" to the California condor, give evidence how much this continent has been depleted as to its wild life. Many
fishes, too, have decreased or wholly disap peared; and there is no doubt that, but for timely protection, many species, now small, would soon follow these vanished representa tives of the earlier fauna and swell the already lamentably long list of extinct animals.
On the high seas the reckless killing of larger animals goes on as relentlessly as on land. The great Cetaceans were abundant down both coasts when America was discov ered. Since then the Biscayan whale, Balaena glacialis, the Greenland whale, Balaena mysti cents, and the much wilder Balaenoptera phys alis have in turn been brought to the verge of extinction. No less the widely distributed ° cachalot," Physeter macrocephalus; while a lengthening list of lesser marine forms is being rapidly hunted out. The greatest destruction has taken place since the invention of the "shot harpoon" by Sven Foyn (at first a sealer), about 1870. By that time owing to wildness and scarcity the older methods of whale cap ture were no longer capable of returning a profit. With the introduction of power launches few forms can now escape„ The monetary loss resulting from this indiscriminate slaughter has been enormous. From 1835 to the wane of the fisheries about 1872, in 19,943 American voyages some 300,000 whales were captured, yielding oil and bone worth $272, 000,000. At the meeting of the American Asso ciation for the Advancement of Science in Chi cago, 1907, a resolution was passed to aid "in any way practicable those measures legislative, international and local which will prevent the now ' imminent extermination of the great marine vertebrates, especially the cetaceans and manatees, seals, green and other turtles on the coasts of the United States, or on the high seas." (See EXTINCTION OF SPECIES). Consult Dawkins, Boyd,
Hunting' (London 1874) ; Bryden,
Revised by G. it WIELAND.