FOSSIL WEALTH.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 15306, 6 August 1923, Page 8

FOSSIL WEALTH.

ANIMALS A NATIONAL ASSET. LACK OP SCIENTIFIC METHOD. If you want to see what the great . Tasmanian forester or "boomer" • • kangaroo looked like, the easiet way • to do it is to take a trip to Paris declares Thomas Dunbabm in the Sydney "Sun." There is, or was, one speciman still extant in the world of the long since extinct rail of Lord ! Howe island, a relation of our native hen. This is in a museum at Vi- : enna. Whether any specimen still exists of the flightless parrot of Macquane Island is doubtful. It it does, it is in Petrograd. Bellingshausen took some of the parrots to Russia in 1822. There is one museum specimen of that rare, though not yet extinct, Queensland [wallaby Macropus Bedford It is in England. Of the ■ once fairly numerous emus of Tas- ". mania and King Island nothing now remains except a few bones and fea- ' thers in Paris. : . Yet all the time the destruction : continues. There are close seasons V* and other devices for protection, '- ■ often ill-enforced. But there are ' innumerable loojp-holes in the law. '■'. Moreover, these matters are left to .•''the States. One State may make a « ' real effort to protect the native fau- •| na, while in another the 'slaughter ;' '• goes merrily on. From the scientific point of view •' the Australian fauna is the most in- % tercsting in the world. '. Australia ■ ' alone, possesses those two "missing '.'• links" between the birds and reptiles . ■ on the one hand and the mammals on ;•' the other—the platypus and the eoh- '■> idna. u '. . Of the marsupials Australia has noi '■' such a complete monopoly, since * : some marsupials are found in : I North and South America. These H few species are, however, of minor im- : - portance compared to the great de- -' veiopment of the marsupials in Aus-

: -'■ tralia. Our scientific knowledge of the "'■ marsupials and monotremes is as yet y~ very scanty. But there is not much "■'l time to lose Unless we can do more «''•: to protect them than we are doing \--] at present Such an authority as rv Dr Colin Mackenzie, of Melbourne, ■ ; ■■■ who is doing at his own expense, and ■*■..' almost single-handed, a wonderful - •-' work on the anatomy of the marsu- '■'•' pials and monotremes, calculates that •:) in another 20 years many species will -i at the present rate, be extinct. The Valuable Platvous. . .* ,As survivals from an earlier world, 'Vi : many of our animals have a cash as r'i ■ well as a scientific value. - For two platypuses landed in New •'" York recently the sum of £6OO was -.■", paid. They did not live long, but ■;:■ while they did they gave Australia a -•"''2 greater (advertisement than all the ''"■). Trade Commissioners ever appointed. -,":' The platypuses secured more pub'■■i licity in the New York newspapers >'» than even Mr Hughes did. It is easi . ier to send Trade Commissioners, for IS they are hardier and more adaptible ;•* creatures. But the platypus can do • *: more to put Australia on the map in .. 'i U.S.A. It does not ask for a salary. .'•; Ye some time ago a lady's cloak • ;• in the making of which 50 platypus - ' skins were used, was offered for sale '.i< in Sydney, and later sent to London. ■'{' It is not many years since sheep'•'i owners in parts of Tasmania used to : ''. pay £1 for the heads of that carnivor--4 ous marsupial, the Tasmanian tiger : '■', (Thylacine), which is confined to the ' island. Now a good "tiger" is worth • : , £SO, and the price is-going up. .' Who could fix the value of a good " specimen of the Wyulda squamacadd- .% atus, of which only one specimen, V now in the Perth Museum, is known? \ The value of the skins and furs ■A collected in Australia varies trmend- \ ously with the seasons and the prices. : ■•': But the value of the exports alone ~i- often run into millions. It has been £f officially stated that in the one year -"> 1919 alone over 5,000,000 opossum > skins and 1,5(50,000 native bear skins Hi were exported from the single State ■ of Queensland. Another "biological industry" pearling and the collection of tre- : pang and of other sea creatures, is one of the mainstays of tropical Aus- : tralia. Australia produces 90 per : cent of the world's pearl shell, and i the products of pearling and of allied industries are worth hundreds of •'-, thousands a year. Perhaps the most valuable fur Is 1 'that yielded by the opossum. Now the opossum is one of the most adap- | table and accommodating of native animals. In Sydney it roams about Mosman % and Neutral Bay and disturbs the rest v of citizens by climbing over their ; roofs by night. In Melbourne op- '■■ ossums are quite at home in the Fitz- . roy Gardens. They eat scraps from ■■£ the restaurant and have been known to get through the window into the Prime Minister's office in the Com- '■■ monwealth buildings. ,-j It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that the idea of 'possum farming - is quite a feasible one. The opos- < ; sums would forage for themselves / and flourish on country of little use ■'■ for other purposes. A small beginning with such an experiment has been made in Western Australia, where Mr Walter Kingsmill had some Tasmanian black opossums placed on ■ an island near Esperance with the idea of farming them. It has been suggested that the Forestry Commissions might give the Idea a trial in some of the State forests; that near Tumbarumba, which Is well adapted for breeding opos- \ sums with valuable fur. But the .Commissioner's seem 'to think that / they have worries enough already. \ While no one breeds opossums the / .destruction goes merrily on. In.the ;'.. !old days the opossum shooter went 'out only when the moon was full enough to supply the light by which to shoot the wretched opossums. Now "sports" go out on dark nights with motor-lamps. Still meaner wretches poison the : opossums wholesale with cyanide. Animals Worth Millions. Our animals are still worth millions to us in spite of the fact (hat in some instances reckless greed and lack of scientific methods have long since destroyed what should be still a valuable source of revenue. Of the whaling and sealing industries, which gave Australia her first exports of any Importance, scarcely a trace remains. All that we have now is the picturesque but unimportant survival of • bay whaling at Twofold Bay, New South Wales, and a little seal poach- . Ing at various places. There was a time when over 100,000 seal skins ; were landed in Sydney in a week. Now there is not one in a year. There are still seals on the Australian coast, all the way from Seal Bocks, New South Wales, to the Leeuwiii. They are supposed to be protected by the States, but there is a go-as-you-please iJTair. Tasmania, for instance, has decided to have an open season in June and .Tuly of this year. How : anyone in authority is going to prevent seals from the Victorian or New .: drouth Wales coast from being "rung-

in" is a matter on which the official mind is probably a blank. When Mr. Hughes wis Prime Minister the Federal Government took interest enough in the matter to obtain reports from Mr E. G. Troughton, of the Australian Museum, and Mr' A. S. le Souef, of the Taronga Park Zoo. As international questions are involved if seals arc to be really protected the Common-wealth is obviously the proper authority to deal with the matter. But notliing has been done. That, strangely named body, the Institute of Science and Industry, has displayed neither science nor industry in this matter. Even a suggestion that an export duty of 3d on all skins, other than rabbit skins, exported from Australia would yield a revenue of some £50,000 a year, which could well be ear-marked first for a general biological survey of the Commonwealth and then to the general work of the institute, does not seem to have aroused the enthusiasm, that might have been expected. Yet the institute's present endowment of £14,000 a year is miserably inadequate for the work that is is supposed to do. The decision of the States at the Premiers' Conference shows that they will not help, and the Commonwealth is not likely to go any higher .with a straight-out subvention... ...