Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/352

338 sixteen feet, was valuable as a resource for the northern tribes, especially the Esquimaux; the flesh provided very acceptable food, and the skin was of use in making their canoes. The pursuit of the rytina has been followed unceasingly, without the least restraint, and these useful cetacea entirely destroyed; the last living one was taken in 1768.

The rytina, covered with a bare skin, black in color, and wrinkled like the bark of an oak, had a mustache with hairs as thick as the quill of a pigeon's feather. These harmless animals delighted in herding together, young and old mingled, and a male and female were often seen moving about together, accompanied by their young family. The rytina usually haunted rather shallow, sandy places, particularly near rivers. They fed on various marine plants, showing a preference, however, for a particular kind of sea-weed. The animals were often seen browsing as they swam slowly, or walked along the bottom, stepping leisurely, like cattle in the fields, and, when satisfied, coming to the shore to lie on their backs. Sometimes in the winter they would be caught and confined under the ice, and die for want of air, their bodies afterward washing ashore. This explains the ease with which, even now, great quantities of the bones of these herbivorous cetacea of Behring's Islands are collected. All that we know of this animal's history has been handed down to us by the memoir of a naturalist and physician, Steller, published in 1751. He accompanied Behring on his voyage to the northwest of America. After the wreck of the ship, followed by the death of the commander and the greater part of his crew, Steller remained on the islands, to which he gave the name of the Russian navigator, till the sailors escaped from the wreck had built a vessel out of the fragments of the ship, which gave them the means of reaching Kamtchatka. Very lately, Russian zoologists have made all possible efforts to rediscover Steller's rytina, but all the labor of their researches has been fruitless. They have only succeeded in procuring some of the animal's bones, and in 1861 the savants of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Helsingfors, had the satisfaction of receiving almost entire skeletons, sent to the governor of the Russian-American possessions, which gave an opportunity for important studies on the osteology of this singular cetacean by Brandt and Nordmann.

The losses suffered by birds have been different, and far more serious than those of mammals; various species, highly remarkable either for great size, or for almost exceptional peculiarities in conformation, have completely disappeared. As to some, the fact is certain, and the presumption is strong as to others. Incapable of flight, and confined to islands, these birds could not escape the attacks of men, and men have exterminated them.