554 LAND ANIMALS 



Direct eradications. — In addition to all the more or less indirect 

 or unplanned influences of civilization upon the natural animal asso- 

 ciations, man affects associated animals directly by the systematic de- 

 struction of such forms as are harmful to him, and of forms which 

 afford a source of meat. The larger vertebrates are most exposed to 

 extermination, as they are easily found, and as their control is of the 

 greatest importance to man. Accordingly, they disappear more and 

 more from cultivated regions. Crocodiles and hippopotami formerly 

 occurred in the Nile as far north as its mouth, but have long since 

 been driven back beyond the Falls of Assouan. Predatory animals 

 such as the bear, wolf, lynx, and wildcat have either disappeared 

 entirely in central Europe and from central United States or have 

 become very rare; even foxes have decreased in number. Lions have 

 been exterminated in South Africa and along the Mediterranean coasts 

 of Africa. Only 85 individuals of the Laemmergeier (Gypaetus) were 

 observed in Switzerland in the years from 1800 to 1887; the number 

 of golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetus) in the same country was estimated 

 as not more than 300 in 1914. Some species of owls are becoming 

 scarce, and the osprey is now rare in many places. 



The larger herbivores are warred against to an almost equal de- 

 gree, to protect the cultivated field and to obtain meat. There were 

 16 species of hoofed mammals in Switzerland in the Pleistocene, 9 

 occurred in the time of the Lake-dwellers, and 5 remain at the present 

 day. 4 Wild horses and aurochs are entirely extinct; the European 

 bison or wisent {Bison bonasus) persists in small numbers; and the 

 European elk, still found in Russia and Scandinavia, is restricted in 

 Germany to a few reserves in East Prussia. Red deer, roe deer, and 

 wild pigs would have been exterminated long since had they not been 

 preserved for the hunt. In North America the enormous herds of 

 bison of former times are gone. In Cape Colony the elephant persists 

 only in small remnants under government protection in the Knysna 

 area and in the Addo Forest on the lower course of the Sunday River. 

 Many species of antelopes, formerly abundant in Cape Colony, are 

 now entirely absent. In India the best mammalian populations are in 

 the government reserved forests; even there tigers are few in number 

 and ungulates are much reduced. 



The Bureau of Biological Survey of the United States has recently 

 undertaken in western North America an active campaign of rodent 

 and predatory animal control or extermination by means of poison, 

 on a scale hitherto unprecedented. Such mass destruction of animal 

 life may be a necessary concomitant of the spread of the human 

 species, but it must nevertheless be deplored by biologists as based 



