THE EXTINCTION OF THE BISON AND OF WHALES

The almost complete and very sudden disappearance of the bison in North America thirty years ago does not seem to have been due simply to the slaughter of tens of thousands of these creatures by men who made a commerce of so-called "buffalo-rugs." These "hunters" miscalled the unhappy bison, which is not a buffalo, nor at all like that creature, just as they gave the name "elk" to the great red deer (the wapiti), although there was a real elk, the so-called "moose," staring them in the face. The sudden extinction of the bison resulted partly from the slaughter and partly from the breaking up of the herds and the interference with their free migration by the trans-continental railway. An interesting discovery made only this year, in regard to the closely allied European bison, suggests that disease may also have played a part in the destruction of the North American bison. A few hundred individuals of the European bison are all that remain at this day. Some are carefully preserved by the Emperor of Russia in a tract of suitable country in Lithuania and another herd exists in the Caucasus. Some of the Lithuanian bison have lately been dying in an unaccountable way, and on investigating a dead individual a Russian observer has discovered a "trypanosome" parasite in the blood. The trypanosomes are microscopic corkscrew-like creatures, of which many kinds have become known within the last ten or fifteen years. They are "single cells"—that is to say, "protoplasmic" animalcules of the simplest structure—provided with a vibrating crest and tail by means of which they swim with incessant screw-like movement through the blood. They rarely exceed one thousandth of an inch in length exclusive of the tail. The poisons which they produce by their life in the blood are the cause of the sleeping-sickness of man (in tropical Africa), of the horse and cattle disease carried by the tsetze fly, and of many similar deadly diseases—a separate "species" being discovered in each disease. A peculiar species is found in the blood of the common frog, and another in that of the sewer-rat. The last discovery of a "trypanosome" is that of one in the blood of the African elephant, announced to the Royal Society by Sir David Bruce.

It is a matter of great interest that a trypanosome has been found in a death-stricken herd of European bison. It suggests that one of the causes of the disappearance of the bison, both in Europe and America, may be the infection of their blood by trypanosomes, and that possibly, whilst a freely migrating and vigorous herd would not be extensively infected, a dwindled and confined herd may be more liable to infection, and that thus the final destruction of an already decadent animal may be brought about. It would now be a matter of extreme interest to ascertain whether the few dwindled herds of bison in North America are infected by trypanosomes, and no doubt we shall soon receive reports on the subject.

A most interesting branch of this subject of the unthinking extermination of great animals by man is that of the extermination of whales. Man is worrying them out of existence. Some are already beyond saving. It would be interesting to know whether there are trypanosomes or other blood-parasites in whales. I suppose that no one has an ill-feeling towards whales. Most of us have never seen a whale, either alive or in the flesh—only a skeleton. I have seen a live whale or two off the coast of Norway; and I once, in conjunction with my friend Moseley, when we were students at Oxford, cut up one, 18 ft. long, which had been exhibited for three weeks during the summer in a tent on the shores of the Bristol Channel, where we purchased it. The skeleton of that whale is now in the museum at Oxford, but happily the smell of it exists only in my memory. The late Mr. Gould, who produced such beautifully illustrated books on birds, told me that he once fell into the heart of a full-sized whale, which he was cutting up. He narrowly escaped drowning in the blood. The whale was not very fresh, and Mr. Gould was unapproachable for a week.

An immense number of whales are killed every year for their oil, and their highly nutritious flesh is wasted. There was an attempt some years ago to make meat extract from it. Some which was brought to me reminded me of the whale on the shores of the Bristol Channel. I do not know if the extract has proved palatable to other people. The Norwegians are specially expert in killing whales. They have been allowed to set up "factories" on the west coast of Ireland and in the Shetlands, where they kill whales with harpoons fired from guns, cut them up, and boil down the fat.

Whales are warm-blooded creatures which suckle their young, and have been developed in past geological times from land animals—the primitive carnivora—which were also the ancestors of dogs, bears, seals and cats. Whales have lost the hind limbs altogether and developed the forelegs into fingerless flippers, whilst the tail is provided with "flukes" like the fins of a fish's tail in shape, but horizontal instead of vertical. The whole form is fish-like, the skin smooth and hairless. It is a remarkable conclusion arrived at by the investigators of the remains of extinct animals that a little four-legged creature the size of a spaniel, and intermediate in character between a hedgehog and a dog, was the common ancestor from which have been derived such widely different creatures as the whale and the bat, the elephant and the man. We can at the present day trace with some certainty the gradual modifications of form by which in the course of many millions of years the change from the primitive, dog-like hedgehog to each of those four living "types" has proceeded.

The whales of to-day are divided into the toothed whales and the whalebone whales. The great cachalot or sperm whale is captured, chiefly in the Southern Ocean, and killed in large numbers for the sake of the "spermaceti," or "sperm oil," which forms the great mass of its head, but he is so fierce and active that he is not easily captured, and is not in immediate danger of extinction. The smaller toothed whales, the killers, dolphins, and porpoises (though one of them—the bottle-nosed whale—is being killed out), are not as yet seriously threatened by commercial man. But the whalebone whales are in a parlous state. The Right whales, as they are called, are the chief of these. They are huge creatures, 60 ft. in length, with an enormous head: it is as much as one third of the total length in the Greenland whale. Besides the Greenland species there are four other "right whales," which may be considered as four varieties of one species. The head is not quite so large in them. The Biscay whale is one of them, and was hunted until it was exterminated in the Bay of Biscay, when the whalers, extending their operations further and further north, came upon the Greenland whale, which proved to be even more valuable than the Biscay species. The huge mouth in these two whales has hanging from its sides within the lips a series of long bars or planks of wonderfully strong, elastic, horny substance—the "baleen" or "whalebone"—each plank being as much as eight or in rare cases twelve feet long. Following close on one another and having hairy edges, they act as strainers so as to separate the floating food of the whale from the water which rushes through its mouth as it swims. The whalebone is of great value commercially, as is also the fat or oil. A hundred years ago whalebone fetched only £25 a ton, now the same quantity fetches more than £1,500. The Rorquals, or "Finners," have smaller heads and mouths; their whalebone is so short as to be valueless, but they grow to even greater size than the Right whales and are found on our own coasts and all over the world. The Humpback whale is one of these "Finners," distinguished by its excessively long flippers and huge bulk.

The Biscay whale was the first of these great creatures to be hunted. The Basques began its capture as early as the ninth century. It was exterminated by them in the Bay of Biscay, and only saved from complete extinction elsewhere by the discovery of the more valuable Arctic or Greenland whale. The capture of the Greenland whale began in 1612; and in 200 years the unceasing pursuit of this species had driven it to the remote places of the Arctic Ocean. It is now so rare that it is not worth while to send a ship out for the purpose of hunting it, and it will probably never recover its numbers. An idea of its value and former abundance may be formed from the fact that between 1669 and 1778 it yielded to 1,400 Dutch vessels about 57,000 individuals, of which the baleen and oil produced a money value of four million pounds sterling. Of late years a single large Greenland whale would bring £900 for its whalebone and £300 for its oil. These two great Right whales having been practically exterminated, the merciless hunt has now been turned on to the wilder and less valuable Finback whales or Finners. In these days of steam and electric light the Arctic night is robbed of its terrors, and the whale chase goes on very fast. The shot harpoon was invented in 1870 by Sven Foyn, a Norwegian, and is the most deadly and extraordinary weapon ever devised by man for the pursuit of helpless animals. It is this invention (a commercial, not a scientific, discovery!) which has, in conjunction with swift steamships, rendered the destruction of whales a matter of ease and deadly certainty. It is this which is being used on the Irish as on the Scandinavian coast, resulting in the pollution of the air and water by the carcases of the slaughtered beasts from which the oil has been extracted. This revolting butchery, without foresight or intelligence, is carried on solely for the satisfaction of human greed, and apparently will be stopped only by the extinction of the yet remaining whales. In forty years in the middle of last century the whale fishery of the United States yielded 300,000 whales to 20,000 voyages, and a value of sixty-million pounds sterling in baleen and oil. It is calculated that in the thousand years during which man has hunted the great whales not less than a million individuals have been captured. Man's skill and capacity have now become such that he will soon have cleared the ocean of these wonderful creatures, since, like the bison, the whales cannot persist when harried and interfered with beyond a certain limited degree.

It appears that the curious musk ox, which now lives on the fringe of the Arctic circle, and in the glacial period existed in the Thames Valley, is doomed. There (as in similar instances in other lands), the comparatively harmless savage race of men (in this case the Eskimo), whose weapons did not enable them seriously to threaten the existence of the animals around them, have now obtained efficient firearms. The musk ox is consequently now between two lines of fire—that of the white hunter on the south, and of the Eskimo on the north.

From regions far remote from the Arctic complaints come of an even more reckless destruction of helpless animals. Perhaps our legislators may feel some personal concern in this case, since it is neither more nor less than the approaching extinction of the turtle, the true green turtle of City fame, to eat which at the invitation of City dignitaries is one of the few duties of a legislator. Both the green turtles and the tortoise-shell turtles are being destroyed indiscriminately on the coast of Florida and in many West Indian Islands by brutal, careless, "white" beach-combers and idlers. By proper care of the eggs and young the turtles could easily be increased enormously in number, and a regulated capture of them be made to yield a legitimate profit. But neither the United States Government nor our own take any steps to restrain promiscuous slaughter of the turtles which come to the shore in order to lay their eggs. Soon the City Fathers will have to do without the "green fat" and their wives without tortoise-shell combs. It will serve them right. Such destitution in these—and, be it noted, in many other matters—will deservedly fall upon those who ignorantly, wilfully, and contentedly neglect to take steps to understand and to control the withering blight created by modern man wherever he sets his foot.