Wild animals of yesterday & to-day

Front matter

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WILD ANIMALS OF YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY forest ,nns ^ ^ ^ existevce /rom the pigmy negroes.’

WILD ANIMALS OF YESTERDAY & TO-DAY

Contents

CHAPTER

I. Introduction ; Beasts Extinct in Prehistoric Times . .

II. Beasts Extinct in Historic Times

II

We now come to the animals which are definitely known to have disappeared during times of which we have historical knowledge ; these are, as it will be seen, but few in number, and may be treated in pretty full detail.

Among the animals that have become extinct during the historic period, the Arctic sea-cow, the Rhytina of naturalists, is certainly that of most scientific interest, as well as the one which would have been of the greatest use to humanity if we had allowed it to survive.

It was a member of the small group of beasts known as Siycnia, still represented by the few species of manatees and dugongs, and, of course, shared their general characters ) that is to sa}^, it was a water animal — never coming ashore of its own accord — without hind limbs, and with a generallv fish-like shape of body and a broad, flat, horizontal fin at the end of the tail. It was, however, like the other sirenians, not so fish-like in shape as the cetaceans or whale tribe

to which the sirenians are not related— and

further approached land mammals in having plenty of hair about the mouth, though, as in the rest of the group, there was none on the body. It was discovered through the shipwreck, in 1741, of Bering’s exploring party on the Commander Islands, the particular island being what was afterwards called Bering Island, after the leader of the expedition, the only other island of the group being Copper Island, which is smaller.

The shipwrecked party had to stay on the island for ten months, and G. W. Steller, the surgeon of the party, who was an excellent observer, has left a most valuable description of the appearance, habits, and anatomy of the beast, in a paper written in Latin and published in his paper on Sea Beasts, in the Proceedings of the Academy of Petropaulovsk, volume II, dated 1749.

These observations reflect the greatest credit on Steller, for those of the anatomy of the beast were carried on under the greatest difficulties. The subject was far too big to be handled comfortably by one man, and the party was so preoccupied in making a vessel to get away on, that, as he tells us, he could only get help by hiring the men for an hour at the end of the day at his own expense, and then they proved very butcherly anatomists, while he could not afford to criticize their methods for fear of losing what slight assistance they were able to give him. Moreover, he was badly worried in this work, so he tells us, not only by the surf and the miseries of the inclement climate, but by packs of “ most rascally ” Arctic foxes, who not only mangled the carcase he was dissecting, but bolted off with his paper, books, and ink. Altogether the task was the very opposite of that of the modern club-fed anatomist, at home in his well-appointed laboratory with proper assistance.

The sea-cow was a huge brute, reaching eight thousand pounds in weight, and measuring as much as twenty-four feet eight inches in length, with a girth round the thickest part at the middle of the body of twenty feet. Its head and mouth were small for the size of the body, and the tail fin, which was broad and forked as in the dugong, not rounded as in the manatee, was six and a half feet across.

The body was covered by a very thick hide — no less than an inch thick ; it looked more like the bark of an aged oak than the skin of a beast, being hairless, rough, rugged, and pimpled, and it was so hard as hardly to be cut by an axe or pierced by a harpoon. Ihe back was comparatively smooth, however, only marked by transverse wrinkles, but the sides were particularly rough and pimply, and bore many raised, saucer-shaped excrescences like fungi, especially about the head. This crustlike outer skin was made up of small tubules packed together and resting on the true skin. These tubules gave off a thin, watery mucus, especially on the flanks and head, which re-

DISSECTION OF STELI.ER'S SEA-COW.

mained wet when the animal had been lying some hours on shore, while the back got dry. It never, by the way, went on shore of its own accord, like the manatee. The thick cuticle was evidently a protection against injury and changes of temperature, for Steller noticed that in the carcases cast up on shore, which were especially to be found in winter, that the grazing off of this outer skin against the rocks had evidently been the cause of the animal’s death.

The colour of the hide, while the beast was wet, was blackish brown like the skin of a smoked ham, but looked all black when dry ; the upper lip was white and clad with white bristles. Some specimens had rather large spots and streaks of white, the colour reaching the true skin as well as appearing on the surface.

The roughest part of the hide, about the head and chest, was badly infested with insects, which often bored through the epidermis down to the true skin, and caused the growth of warts.

The small mouth was overhung by a large, thick, semicircular upper lip, fourteen inches broad ; the bristles on it were four or five inches long. The under lip was seven inches broad, and heart-shaped, without bristles ; but along the junction of the closed jaws was a dense growth of bristles, serving to keep the food in the mouth while any water taken in flowed out. These bristles were as thick as pigeons’ quills.

Both lips were divided into an outer and inner portion, the inner part being rough like a calf’s tongue ; with these lips, which were very movable, the animal grazed like a horse or ox, tearing away the seaweeds, the bristles on the lips serving instead of teeth to give them a hold. They were able to shear off the softer parts of the seaweeds from the stalks as neatly as if this were done with a knife, the lips being much stronger and harder than those of land animals, so much so that neither boiling nor any other treatment would make them fit for human food.

There were no true teeth in the jaws, and the food was chewed by means of two strong white bony masses, or fused teeth, one situated on the palate and the other on the lower jaw. Their structure was full of canals like a sponge, and their surfaces ridged like millstones, the ridges of either side meeting in points in the middle, according to the illustration given in Steller’s work ; they thus were well fitted to supply the place of the absent grinders.

The tongue was like an ox-tongue, and a foot long, but it lay so far back in the jaws, so as not to interfere with the action of the curious false grinders, that it might easily have seemed to be wanting altogether, and could not be pulled far forward.

The nostrils were on the top of the head, and were two inches wide ; the eyes were black, only as large as a sheep’s, set exactly between the end of the snout and the ear-opening, and had no eyelashes or eyelids, only appearing through a round hole in the skin which could be closed altogether, and was only half an inch across. The ear-hole was also so small as only to admit anything as thick as a fowl’s quill.

Although the neck was very short, only half the length of the head, it was noticeably narrower than the head at the back, and had some flexibility in the living animal, although in the dead carcase it looked stiff.

The body bulged very much in the middle, and narrowed suddenly towards the neck and tail, and the belly looked like an inflated bag. The tail fin was hard and stiff, of a substance like whalebone, and jagged at its end.

But the great peculiarity that distinguished the beast from both land and amphibious animals, as Steller says, was the formation of its fore-feet — the hind ones being absent as in its allies. These limbs were twenty-six and a half inches long, and had no signs of toes or nails, ending short at the bones of the wrist, which were covered with tendons, ligaments, and skin, like the stump of an amputated human limb ; only the outer skin was there much thicker, harder, and drier, so that the ends of the feet were rather like the hoofs of a horse, only more pointed, and so more suited for digging. These hoofs were smooth and rounded above, flat and slightly hollowed below, where they were thickly covered with half -inch bristles like a brush.

In one specimen Steller found this hoof-like end of the foot cloven as in an ox, but he thought this was simply an accidental malformation, as the division did not go deeper than the surface skin, which was liable to split.

With those curious fore - feet the sea-cow swam, crawled along the bottom, held on to the slippery rocks, tore the seaweed and seagrass from the rocks like a horse pawing with his hoofs, resisted violently when harpooned, and caressed its mate. Steller says nothing about its embracing its young with them, though it had its nipples on the breast like the manatee, which nurses its young with its fore-paws ■ but in this beast the feet end in long flexible paddles, containing the usual bones of the toes.

Steller’s account of the habits of the sea-cows is very full and clear, and I am here translating almost all of it. He says they liked sandy shallows, and especially sought the mouths of streams, attracted by the influx of the fresh water. They were always in herds, the adult animals being careful to surround the immature specimens and calves in the flanks and rear, keeping them in the middle of the flock, and thus taking them to feed ; at high tide they came so close inshore that he could not only reach them with a stick or spar, but even stroke their backs. If more roughly treated all they did was to move farther out, but they soon forgot the injury and came back again.

The families, consisting of a male, adult female, and their small calf, generally kept together ; he thought that they lived in pairs and had but one young at a birth — at any rate, he never saw the female attended by more than a single calf. They appeared usually to have their young in autumn, after what appeared to be more than a year’s gestation.

They were very greedy animals, continually on the feed, and eating so greedily that their heads were constantly under water ; they cared so little about their safety that one could go about among them either in a boat or without one, and choose at one’s ease any of the flock to harpoon. All they did when grazing was, every four or five minutes to raise their nostrils out of water and expel the air from their lungs with a little jet of water and a snort like a horse ; but while feeding they slowly moved one foot after another, and so half swam gently, and half walked, as it were, like oxen or sheep feeding. Half of their bodies, the back and sides to wit, were always above water, and while they grazed the gulls used to perc on their backs, and regale themselves on the parasites which harboured in the skin just as crows feed on those of pigs and sheep.

They did not feed promiscuously on all sorts of seaweed, but especially on four kinds, one with cabbage-like leaves, a club-shaped kind, one like an ancient Roman shield, and a very long one with undulated margin ; and where they had been feeding for one day great heaps of stalks and roots could be seen thrown up by the sea.

When they were full-fed some of them took a nap, floating on their backs, but they drew off farther from the shore to avoid being stranded by the ebbing tide. In winter they were often drowned by the floating ice, or perished by being caught in the surf and dashed against the rocks ; at this season they got so lean that not only was their backbone visible, but their ribs also. In spring they mated, after a great deal of sportive chasing.

They were caught with a huge harpoon, like the head of the fluke of an anchor, to an iron ring at the other end of which a very long and strong line was fastened. A strong man took this harpoon, and got into a boat with four or five others. With three or four rowing and one steering they rapidly approached the herd ; the harpooner stood in the bows holding the harpoon and launched it as soon as ever the boat was near enough, upon which thirty men on shore took the other end of the line and held the animal, which they then drew sliorewards, not without great difficulty on account of its violent resistance. Those in the boat meanwhile kept their position with another rope (presumablyihe other end of the line, which was fastened to the harpoon by its middle) and wore out the beast by frequent strokes till it was killed by stabbing with dirks, knives, and other weapons, and drawn on shore.

Some cut huge pieces from the beast while still alive, its only protest being to move its tail vigorously and to struggle so violently with its paws that great pieces of the skin often flew off, while it breathed hard and groaned, as it were, and the blood spouted on high like a fountain from its wounded back, whenever the head came above water and a fresh influx of air into the lungs drove the blood out.

The old and very large animals were more easily caught than the calves, because these were much more vigorous in their movements, and even if the harpoon did not break, the skm tore and thus set them free, which happened more than once.

As soon as any one of the beasts was harpooned and began to struggle, its comrades in the herd immediately came up and -tried to help the captive. Some, with this idea, tried to capsiZe the boat with their backs, others bore on the line and strove to break it, or struggled by beating it with their tails to drag the harpoon from the back of the wounded animal in which attempt they sometimes succeeded ' A remarkabie proof of their intelligence and

f thei1r mates was that a male,

after he had vainly tried with all his strength to free his female, which had been harpooned and was being dragged ashore, and had for this suffered many strokes from the hunters, nevertheless followed to the shore, and several times rushed suddenly like an arrow to her, dead though she then was. On the next day when they came at dawn to cut up the meat and carry it home, they again found the male lying near his mate, which Steller also saw on the third day, when he had come by himself for the purpose only of studying the intestines.

The sea-cow was mute; the only sound it emitted was its hard breathing and the sighs it uttered, as it were, when wounded. Steller could not say what powers of sight and hearing it possessed, but it could not see or hear much, as it generally kept its head under water, so that it seemed to neglect the use of these faculties.

He considers, reasonably enough, that the remarkable tameness of these animals, as compared with the wariness ascribed by our countryman Dampier to the American manatee, was due to the lack of human disturbance, just as otters, seals, and Arctic foxes in this desert island of Bering had, until his party s arrival, never been disturbed, and were killed without any trouble, but soon became as wild as the American manatee.

The fat under the skin of the sea-cow was in most places a palm’s breadth in thickness, firm and white, but if exposed to the sun turning to the yellow tint of May butter. Its smell and flavour were so good that the fat of no other sea beast could compare with it ; indeed, it was far better than that of land animals. Besides, it could be kept for a long time, even in the hottest weather, without getting rancid or smelling badly, while when rendered out it was so sweet and savoury that Steller’s people never felt the want of butter, and it could be used for the same purposes as that substance. Its flavour was much like that of sweet almond oil, and it burnt with a clear, inodorous, and smokeless flame.

Nor was its medicinal use to be despised ] it was a mild laxative, and could be drunk without provoking nausea or taking away the appetite. Here, of course, one must allow something for the cold climate and the taste of Russians for oil, but it is evident that the seacow’s grease was of very superior quality. The fat of the tail was of harder consistency and more delicate when tried out.

The meat was coarser-fibred than beef, and redder than that of land animals ; and was remarkable in that it could be kept a long time in the open air in the hottest weather without

smelling bad, in spite of the attacks of numerous maggots.

Steller thought that this was due to the fact that the animal fed on seaweed which contained some sulphur and much sea-salt and nitre, which hindered putrefaction, as salt does when sprinkled on meat, the more so as this salt was more intimately mixed with the flesh in conjunction with the sulphur.

While this sea-cow meat took a lot of cooking, when done it was very good, and not easily to be distinguished from beef. The fat of the calves was hard to tell from fresh lard, but their flesh was just like veal ; it soon became tender on boiling, and, like that of a young pig, swelled to double its bulk during the process.

The sinewy blubber about the head and tail could hardly be softened by boiling ; but the meat of those parts was much better than that of the belly, chine, and flanks ; the common idea that it could not be salted was incorrect, for it took salt so well that it became just like salt beef and was very good eating.

The internal organs— heart, liver, and kidneys— were too hard, and Steller’s party set no store by them, as they had plenty of the meat. There were so many of these animals about this one island that the natives of Kamtchatka could live on them entirely.

Man, indeed, seems to have been the seacow’s only animal enemy, except the lice which infested it, which Steller describes as transparent white or yellowish insects, and some parasitic worms he found inside it ; but from the care the old animals took, as he says, to surround the younger ones, it is very likely that, like most sea animals, they had to dread the attacks of the grampus or killer- whale. At any rate, the storms of winter and the difficulty of obtaining food at that time seem to have been the chief check on their increase until the advent of civilized man ; though, from the fact that they were apparently only found about the shores of Bering and Copper Islands, it has been inferred that the sea-cows represented a species which had already seen its best days, or they would have had a more extended range.

This is the idea of Dr. L. Stejneger, who has discussed the extermination of the beast at length, and has himself spent a year and a half on Bering Island, and so knows the locality well. He concludes that when the island was discovered there could not have been more than fifteen hundred of the animals about it ; suitable feeding-places were not to be found everywhere, and he noted only about fifteen of such spots. As he says, if each of these were visited by a hundred sea-cows on the average, and those broken up into herds, they would give the impression of a large number.

In any case, it is abundantly evident that such a useful beast as the sea-cow was too good to live — among thoughtless humanity.

When Bering’s expedition got back, others went out to hunt the fur-bearing animals, and lived on the meat of the sea-cows in the meantime. More than half of these parties wintered there, with the express intention of victualling with sea-cow beef for further journeys of two years or more. No less than twenty vessels thus stopped there, each for six months, or usually longer, with crews of at least thirty men to be fed. Others wintered on Copper Island, and many no doubt were unrecorded. Thus these animals, whose number was from their nature and that of their surroundings strictly limited, as they increased slowly and had a hard time of it in winter, had to support a human population which, though temporary, was quite considerable under the circumstances.

Moreover, the provisioning, extensive as it was, was too often conducted in a very wasteful manner. Jakovleff, a Russian mining engineer, who went to prospect for copper on Copper Island in 1754, mentioned that the fur-hunters used to try to capture sea-cows for food single-handed, by sneaking up to animals lying close inshore and spearing them. The beasts, since caution was necessary, were evidently not quite so confiding now as they were in Steller’s time, but the hunters often succeeded in striking them, though rarely in killing them outright. The natural result of this was that the stricken brute got out to sea, died there, and more often than not only drifted back when too far gone in putrefaction to be of any use, even if recovered at all. This of course entailed much unnecessary slaughter, and Jakovleff in the year following his expedition, petitioned the authorities in Kamtchatka to prohibit this method of hunting, to save the sea-cows on

Bering Island, as those on Copper Island had already gone. In fact, he could not winter on this place of his objective for that very reason.

Now Jakovleff said that one sea-cow would feed thirty-three men for a month, and as Dr. Stejneger calculates that 670 men wintered on Bering Island between 1743 and 1763, staying, on the average, ten months, this would mean, he concludes, the sacrifice of about 205 animals. Add to this 400 men who provisioned for long journeys and would need about 290 animals for an average time of twenty-four months, the total would be 495 beasts killed, without reckoning those which were lost as above described.

Dr. Stejneger reckons these as five times the number actually used, giving a total of 2475 killed up to 1763, nearly 1000 over what he estimated as the stock existing in Steller’s time. Even if the number lost were overestimated to a considerable extent, this is quite a big enough figure to account for the fact that the sea-cows vanished from Bering Island, as they had done from Copper Island, before many more years had passed.

After 1763 little is heard of Bering Island, and Dr. Stejneger thinks that the small attention now paid to it points to the fact that the sea-cows and fur-bearing animals had been reduced below workable numbers. The foxes would not suffer so badly as the big, helpless brutes, and a party who went to hunt them in

1767 or 1768 seem to have killed the last sea-cow, for it was in the latter year that the last specimen was known to have been killed. At any rate, in a list of the animals given in 1772 by Dmitri Bragin, no sea-cows are mentioned, so that there can hardly have been any remaining. Thus in twenty-seven years from its very discovery this unfortunate beast was altogether exterminated.

Although the cloven-hoofed animals have been esteemed as food in all times, besides being useful providers of hides, and have therefore been more persecuted throughout the ages than any other beasts whatever, nevertheless, only one of them has become completely extinct in historical times, and that little more than a century ago.

This was the blue-buck of the Cape, a near relative of the handsome sable antelope and the powerful and savage roan antelope — indeed, it is the only other member of the genus Hippotragus to which they belong, and is scientifically known as Hippotragus leucophaeus. Five mounted specimens of it still exist in museums, but not in any such institutions in this country, although the British Museum has a pair of horns. These horns are of backwardly curved shape and surrounded by raised rings to within a short distance of the point, like those of the sable and roan antelopes.

The beast, however, is not so large as these, a blue-buck and brown hy/ena.

Tiro animals, one of which is extinct , and the other threatened

with extinction.

male specimen in the Paris Museum measuring forty-five inches at the withers, whereas the sable, which is smaller than the roan, stands over four feet ; his horns are twenty-one and a half inches long round the curve. The female, which also has horns, is smaller, a specimen of this sex in the Vienna Museum measuring forty inches in shoulder height. The horns are more like those of the roan antelope than those of the sable, which has them far longer proportionately than either of the others.

The colour is very different from that of the sable and roan, which in addition to the general tint indicated by their names have conspicuous white and black markings on the head ; the blue-buck is of a blue-grey tint nearly all over, shading into a whitish tint below, and only relieved by a brown patch on the forehead. The hair on the ridge of the neck is short and set forwards, but does not form a conspicuous mane as in the roan and sable antelopes.

The colour, from what Kolbe says in the abstract to be quoted directly, was much brighter in the living animal, which was no doubt a very handsome creature ; blue-grey is a colour which is very apt to fade in museum specimens. In any case it is a rare tint among wild beasts, and the only other antelopes which show it are the male nilghai of India and the brindled gnu. The little South African antelope which now has the same name of blue-buck is a very different creature, one of the duikers

( Cephalolophus ) ; it is only about as big as a hare, with very short horns, and its colour is not by any means of a very bluish grey.

The first mention of the real original bluebuck is found in Kolbe’s work The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, volume II ; I quote from Medley’s quaint translation from the original German, published in London in 1731

“ The Blew Goats are shap’d like the Tame, but are as large as an European Hart. Their Hair is very short and of a delicate Blew ; but the colour fades, when they are kill d, to a blewish grey. Their Beards, which are pretty long, add not a little to their Comliness.” This sounds strange, because the specimens of the blue -buck we know have shown hardly any throat-fringe, less than the roan and sable ; but perhaps the beast grew a beard along the jaws in winter only, like the wild horse.

“ Their homes,” he goes on, “ are not long in Proportion to those of other Goats, but they are very neat, and run very curiously up in Rings till within a little of the Point ; which is sti eight and smooth. Their Legs are long, but not out of Proportion. Their Flesh is well tast d, but rarely fat. And they are rarely kill’d but for the sake of their Skins ; which are as good as those of Deer. Their Flesh is generally given to the Dogs. These Goats are only to be met

with far up in the Country.”

Although the beast was evidently known m the quite early days of Cape colonization, it was not till 1766 that it received a full scientific description, and that not from a Dutch naturalist, as one might have expected, but from Pallas, a Russian ; this was published in his Zoological Miscellanies. He says he had seen many skins sent from the Cape.

Buffon, on the information of Allamand, mixed it up with the Siberian gazelle ; in this way a figure of the real blue-buck got published under the name of tzeiran, which really applies to this Asiatic gazelle. The English naturalist Pennant mentions it in his History of Quadrupeds, published in 1781, as the blue antelope, giving the reference to Pallas’s description, and describing it anew himself from a skin which he bought at Amsterdam, brought from the Cape of Good Hope. “ I was informed,” he says, “ that they are found far up the country, north of that vast promontory, which I find confirmed by the late journies. It is called by the Dutch the Blauwe Bock or blue goat. This is the species, which, from the form of the horns and length of the hair, seems to connect the goat and antelope tribes.”