WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



good or evil, in the comparative plenitude, or in 

 the habits, of the creatures dwelling about him. 

 He himself was really as wild and indigenous as 

 they, hunting, like the carnivores, purely for food, 

 and, with the osprey, fishing only when his w^ants 

 were urgent; his mind was too grim to entertain 

 the idea of pursuing animals for sport, and his 

 civilization too limited to cause much disturbance 

 of natural conditions. 



During the last two and a half centuries white 

 men have spread everywhere, and in almost every 

 part of the continent 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 

 wdth 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 an- 

 imals, birds included, would have been so harassed 

 by their changed surroundings and the persecu- 

 tions of human foes that they would have rapidly 

 disappeared. With the vast majority of the quadru- 

 peds this has actually been the case. "Wild 

 beasts'' no longer haunt our forests, to the terror 

 of the traveller; nor can the hunter now find game 



203 



