Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/407

 CONSERVATION OF THE NATIVE FAUNA 401

San Francisco Bay alone. Dr. T. S. Palmer, in a conversation with the writer, asserted that in the seventies the lowlands of the San Joaquin Valley were a veritable trapper's paradise. In the ark of one trapper, on Old Biver, about fifteen miles above Webb's Landing, in the spring of 1877, he saw beaver skins piled flat as high as a six foot door. Evidently the beaver has become scarcer and still more scarce as the years have gone by, until it has seemed doubtful whether the species could survive even with the total protection which has for several years been accorded it. It must be admitted that of late the outlook is more hopeful. There is said to be a colony of one hundred and fifty in the Cache Slough district in the Sacramento Biver, as well as another considerable colony on the San Joaquin Biver near Mendota; and scattered indi- viduals and colonies have been reported from the Fit, Sacramento, Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers. It is probable that a few still occur on the Feather and American rivers, but the exact status of the species on these streams at present is unknown.

The Sea Elephant

We are prone to forget or overlook the intimate relation between the interests of man and the presence of the native animals. An illustra- tion of what is perhaps one of the more unusual of these relationships is furnished by the case of the sea elephant, the abundant oil of which, according to Stephens, was much in demand as an illuminant in the early days in this state previous to the general use of coal oil. The market created by pioneer necessities, coupled with the sluggish temper of the animal, both mental and physical, evidently conspired to work its doom in our waters. Formerly found in some numbers, we must believe, along our southern coast and as far north as Point Beyes, it is gone completely from our shores, being reduced to a handful of sur- vivors on Guadalupe Island off the coast of Lower California.^

The Sea Otteb

The most aberrant of all living fissipedian carnivores as well as " the most valuable fur-bearing mammal in the worW is the sea otter. These animals were present in abundance off our shores at least until the early part of the nineteenth century. Bryant* has called atten- tion to the fact that in the year 1801 no less than sixteen ships, one English and fifteen American, were on the Californian coast engaged in the pursuit of the sea otter. Bancroft, the historian, asserts that 18,000 otter skins were collected that year for the China market by the Ameri- can vessels alone. In 1812 as many as seven or eight hundred sea otters

TSee Townsend, Proo. V, 8. Nat. Mu8,, 8, 1885, pp. 90-93; "Pelagic Seal- ing, Extract from the For Seals and Par Seal Islands of the North Pacific Ocean," Part III, 1899, p. 267; and Zoologica, 1, 1912, pp. 172-173.

8 Calif. Fish and Game, 1, 1915, p. 97.

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