94 EXTIRPATION OF WILD QUADRUPEDS. 
is becoming rare, and the ibex or steinbock, once common in 
all the high Alps, is now believed to be confined to the Cogne 
mountains in Piedmont, between the valleys of the Dora 
Baltea and the Orco, though it is said that a few still linger 
about the Grandes Jorasses near Cormayeur. 
The chase, which in early stages of human life was a neces- 
sity, has become with advancing civilization not merely a 
passion but a dilettanteism, and the cruel records of this 
pastime are among the most discreditable pages in modern - 
literature. It is true that in India and other tropical countries, 
the number and ferocity of the wild beasts not only justify 
but command a war of extermination against them, but the 
indiscriminate slaughter of many quadrupeds which are 
favorite objects of the chase can urge no such apology. Late 
official reports from India state the number of human 
victims of the tiger, the leopard, the wolf and other beasts of 
prey, in ten “districts,” at more than twelve thousand within 
three years, and we are informed on like authority that within 
the last six years more than ten thousand men, women, and 
children -have perished in the same way in the Presidency of 
Bengal alone. One tiger, we are told, had killed more than a 
hundred people, and finally stopped the travel on an important 
road, and another had caused the desertion of thirteen villages 
and thrown 250 square miles out of cultivation. In such facts 
we find abundant justification of the slaying of seven thousand 
tigers, nearly six thousand leopards, and twenty-five hundred 
other ravenous beasts in the Bengal Presidency, in the space 
of half a dozen years. But the humane reader will not think 
the value of the flesh, the skin, and other less important 
products of inoffensive quadrupeds a satisfactory excuse for 
the ravages committed upon them by amateur sportsmen as 
well as by professional hunters. In 1861, it was computed that 
the supply of the English market with ivory cost the lives 
of 8,000 elephants. Others make the number much larger, 
and it is said that half as much ivory is consumed in the United 
States as in Great Britain. In Ceylon, where the elephants 
