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NATURALIST'S GUIDE TO THE AMERICAS 



life. Fires swept the country in all 

 directions; armies of horsemen pene- 

 trated to remote places; wagons rumbled 

 over the hills and down the valleys; 

 there was a tumult of shouting and the 

 roar of guns, and violence reigned, where 

 until that day had been the peace of a 

 primeval solitude. The slaughter had 

 been begun. 



Save for three or four small herds in 

 captivity the bison had been extermi- 

 nated at least fifteen years before "The 

 Run;" the elk had disappeared at about 

 the same time. The shameful story of 

 the wanton slaughter of these animals, 

 particularly of the bison, has been told 

 too often and too well to merit repeti- 

 tion here. After 1889, the deer and 

 pronghorn antelope, the black bear and 

 cougar, the beaver and the otter, the 

 wild turkey and the prairie chicken, 

 and many other less conspicuous forms 

 faded away. The last pronghorns were 

 killed in the western part of the state 

 in 1910. In 1917, Cross estimated the 

 number of native wild deer (all white- 

 tails) still in the state at not more than 

 one hundred fifty and these were in the 

 Ouachitas. Today the black bear can 

 be found only in the Ouachita and the 

 Wichita Mountains, and even in the 

 latter may already have vanished. The 

 cougar is now rare even in the mountain 

 refuges, though occasionally one, or 

 even a pair, impelled by hunger or the 

 wanderlust, may revisit other parts of 

 the state, as was the case in Cleveland 

 County in 1917, when a pair of these 

 fine cats spent a season there. The 

 beaver exists now only in one or two 

 private preserves in the western part of 

 the state; the otter is gone; the mink 

 is rare. The gray wolf is no longer 

 common and is doomed to extinction 

 since the farmers and ranchmen wage 

 constant warfare upon him in revenge 

 for the destruction he occasions in their 

 herds and flocks. The coyote is prob- 

 ably holding its own, if not actually 

 increasing in numbers. During the 

 first few years that brought contact 

 with the white settlers, the coyotes 

 became acquainted with cultivated 

 fields, domestic animals, traps, guns 



and poison bait. Their number de- 

 creased until the survivors learned 

 caution and came to understand the 

 ways of man. Now they are frequently 

 considered more cunning than the fox. 

 The present generation is well able to 

 cope with the problems presented by a 

 settled country; are graduates in the 

 mastery of traps and guns; have a nose 

 keen to detect poison; hence, combining 

 boldness with cunning, are now some- 

 times observed within the environs of 

 even large towns or cities. There is 

 little probability of their eventual 

 extermination. Bob-cats, though rarely 

 seen, are still common in the timber 

 along water courses and in the ravines 

 and canyons oi the more rugged sections. 

 The badger has become rare and will 

 soon disappear forever; raccoons and 

 skunks of several species seem to have 

 adapted themselves fairly well to the 

 new conditions. The opossum, for all 

 its apparent stupidity and helplessness, 

 is still abundant where conditions are 

 favorable, and the writer has counted as 

 many as eighteen in one persimmon tree 

 when that fruit was ripe. The prairie- 

 dog, despite constant persecution, or 

 possibly because of it, is extending its 

 range slightly eastward, forming small 

 isolated villages at least as far as Cleve- 

 land County. The burrowing owl is 

 following it in this recent extension of 

 its range. The rabbits — cottontail, 

 swamprabbit, and jackrabbit — all seem 

 to survive in plentiful numbers, perhaps 

 partly because of the diminution of the 

 carnivores. Other rodents do not ap- 

 pear to have suffered any loss in popula- 

 tion, and some like the pocket gophers 

 and ground squirrels are really serious 

 pests in alfalfa fields. 



The larger prairie chicken is probably 

 extinct; while the lesser maintains a 

 precarious hold only in the High Plains 

 Region. Where formerly pelicans could 

 be seen in flocks of 150 (South Canadian 

 River, Cleveland County, 1907), now 

 only occasional stragglers occur; the 

 whooping crane no longer is to be found, 

 and the sandhill crane is rare. Where 

 once flocks of wild geese belonging to 



