WASTEFUL DESTRUCTION OF BUFFALOES.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 42, 18 July 1874, Page 3

WASTEFUL DESTRUCTION OF BUFFALOES.

[From “Chambers’ Journal.”] Some years ago we used to hear of vast numbers of sheep being slaughtered in Australia, and boiled down for the sake of their fat. The meat was thrown away. It always struck us as a cruel and wasteful thing to kill so many animals in order to fill barrels with tallow. The preparation of meat for export in air-tight tins, has seemingly put an end to this wastefulness of food. While matters are so far improving in Australia, intelligence arrives of a destruction of animal food in America, which, if anything, goes beyond all that has been prcxiously heard of. We refer to the hunting and killing of buifalocs wholesale, for the mere sake of their skins, the value of

which on the spot is said to be very trifling. It has long been known that the practice was carried on to some extent in parts of South America. Now it is pursued with relentless ardour in the United States. On this subject we copy the following from a late number of ‘ Nature’ and leave it to make its own impression ; —‘ The enormous extent of the destruction of buffaloes on the western plains of the United Slates seems to have undergone no diminution during the present winter, and there is every reason to fear that, should this continue a few years longer, (he animal will become as scarce as is its European congener at the present day. At present, thousands of buffaloes are slaughtered, every day, for their hides alone, which, however, have glutted the market to such an extent, that, whereas, a few years ago, they were worth three dollars a-piecc at the railroad stations, skins of bulls now bring but one dollar, and those of cows and calves sixty and forty cents respectively. A recent short surveying expedition in Kansas, led to the discovery of the fact that, on the south fork of the Renublican, upon one spot, were to be counted six thousand five hundred carcases of buffaloes, from which the hides only had been stripped. The meat was not touched, but left to rot on the plains. At a short distance hundreds more of carcases were discovered, and, in fact, the whole plains were dotted with putrefying remains of buffaloes. It was estimated that there at least two thousand hunters encamped along the plains, hunting the buffalo. One party of sixteen stated that they had killed twenty-eight hundred during during the pastsummer, the hides only being utilised.’