ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF MAMMALIA IN EUROPE. 225 
the Carpathians, the Abruzzi and the Balkan Mountains, 
bears are still to be found. In the Cis-leithan provinces of 
Austria, 33 were killed in 1892, 41 in 1893, 45 in 1894, 
18 in 1895, and 18 in 1896. In 1897 only 23 were killed 
in the Crown lands of Austria. On the other hand, in 
1898, 3 were killed in Carniola, 1 in the Tyrol, 16 in 
Galicia, and 9 in Bukowina. Tradition fortunately describes 
the bears of the Carpathians as being of a specially good- 
natured type.* In Russia and Scandinavia bears are still 
numerous, and in the Caucasus specially constructed huts 
are required to protect the peasants who keep nightly 
watch. . 
The large and heterogeneous Order Rodentia is well repre- 
sented in the Europasian sub-region; but it were useless to 
attempt a definition of the habitat of even the most interest- 
ing species. Many forms are characterized by a remarkable 
power of adapting themselves to changed conditions, as well 
as by a tendency to migrate to more or less remote dis- 
tances. By some nations almost all rodents are used as 
food, though in the north-western countries of Europe the 
flesh of the vast majority is despised. The members of this 
Order are all more or less destructive to forestry or agricul- 
ture; but their powers of reproduction and preservation are 
so great, that all man’s efforts to extinguish several of the 
most obnoxious species have hitherto been attended with 
little success. Yet the engaging Marmot becomes year by 
year less frequently observed by the Alpine traveller, and 
the still more curious porcupine is too destructive to be 
preserved much longer in Italy. 
But the most interesting of the rare European mammals 
is the Beaver. As this animal is noxious when living, and 
in several respects valuable when dead, its chances of sur- 
viving much longer, even in places where it is protected, 
appear to be desperate; and yet, within the last quarter of 
the present century, its flesh was regularly sold as a delicacy 
in the markets of Vienna and Buda-Pest. In the far north, 
where the superior quality of its fur exposed it to special 
persecution, it has already been brought to the very verge 
* Attention may be called to the large proportion of wild animals reported 
from the little province of Bukowina. 
