EXTIRPATION OF WILD QUADRUPEDS. 91 
error in estimating the numbers of the bison in a given district 
from the magnitude of the herds seen at or about the same 
time at a single place of observation ; and, upon the whole, it 
is neither proved nor probable that the bison was ever, at any 
one time, as numerous in North America as the domestic bovine 
species is at present. The elk, the moose, the musk ox, the 
caribou, and the smaller quadrupeds popularly embraced under 
the general name of deer, though suflicient for the wants of a 
sparse savage population, were never numerically very abun- 
dant, and the carnivora which fed upon them were still less so. 
It is almost needless to add that the Rocky Mountain sheep and 
goat must always have been very rare. 
Summing up the whole, then, it is evident that the wild 
quadrupeds of North America, even when most numerous, were 
few compared with their domestic successors, that they required 
a much less supply of vegetable food, and consequently were 
far less important as geographical elements than the many 
millions of hoofed and horned cattle now fed by civilized man 
on the same continent. 
Eixtirpation of Wild Quadrupeds. 
Although man never fails greatly to diminish, and is perhaps 
destined ultimately to exterminate, such of the larger wild 
quadrupeds as he cannot profitably domesticate, yet their num- 
bers often fluctuate, and even after they seem almost extinct, 
they sometimes suddenly increase, without any intentional steps 
to promote such a result on his part. During the wars which 
followed the French Revolution, the wolf multiplied in many 
parts of Europe, partly because the hunters were withdrawn 
from the woods to chase a nobler game, and partly because the 
8 ) J 
bodies of slain men and horses supplied this voracious quadru- 
PI 
ped with more abundant food.* The same animal became 
* During the late civil war in America, deer and other animals of the chase 
multiplied rapidly in the regions of the Southern States which were partly 
depopulated and deprived of their sportsmen by the military operations of the 
contest, and the bear is said to have reappeared in districts where he had not 
been scen in the memory of living men. 
