CIVILIZING INFLUENCES. 183 
During the last two and a half centuries white men have 
spread everywhere, and in almost every part of the conti- 
nent their machinery has replaced the original simplicity 
of nature. ‘Thousands of square miles of forest have been 
cleared, marshes have been drained, rivers obstructed and 
tormented with mill-wheels, and cities have sprung up as 
swiftly as the second growth of scrub pines follows the 
levelling of an oak wood. 
The inevitable result must follow that all our ani- 
inals, birds included, would have been so harassed by their 
changed surroundings and the persecutions of human foes, 
that they would have rapidly disappeared. With the vast 
majority of the quadrupeds this has actually been the ease. 
‘Wild beasts” no longer haunt our forests, to the terror of 
the traveller; nor can the hunter now find game that a few 
decades ago was abundant almost at his door. It has been 
much the same with wildfowl and game birds. They have 
deserted their ancient nesting-places within our borders 
for the safer Arctic heaths, or old and young have been all 
but exterminated by gun and snare. Nevertheless, a large 
number of the smaller birds of our woodlands and prairies, 
as I hope to show, have been decidedly benefited by the 
advent of white men. I know of but one sort of quad- 
ruped—field-mice—of which this can also be said. 
