24 J. E. HAETIJs^G — AXIMALS WHICH HATE BECOME EXTINCT. 



wherever and whenever they couhl be found, and only managed 

 to survive in reduced numbers for some few centuries longer in 

 consequence of the utter impossibility of dislodging them from the 

 almost impenetrable forests and mountain-fastnesses to which they 

 were driven. Later on, when large tracts of forest were purposely 

 cut down or burned for the purpose of expelling these animals, and 

 statutes were put in force which rewarded the slayers of them, 

 their extermination was finally accomplished. 



To the naturalist it is a somewhat sad reflection, that animals of 

 the forest and the chase, now only known by name as the in- 

 habitants of other countries, were once as familiar to our ancestors 

 as they are at present to the people of the remote kingdoms which 

 they frequent. Man has been warring against these forest-denizens, 

 and as tract after tract which they once claimed as their own has 

 been brought under the ploughshare, they have been driven further 

 and further back, until the last of them has been blotted out from 

 our fauna. 



Lake and moor have become fields of yellow grain ; forest has 

 been changed into morass, morass into moor, and moor again into 

 forest, until, finding nowhere to rest in peace, the bear, the 

 beaver, the reindeer, the wild boar, and the wolf, have become in 

 Britain amongst the things that were. 



