EXTIEPATION OF WILD QUADKUPEDS. 89 



one point only for a few days during the entii-e season. Hence 

 tliere is risk of great 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 tlie do- 

 mestic 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 sufficient for the wants 

 of a sparse savage population, were never numerically very abun- 

 dant, and the camivora 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 quad- '. 

 rupeds of North America, even when most nmnerous, were few • 

 compared with their domestic successors, that they requu-ed a j 

 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. 



Extirpation of Wild Quadrupeds. 



Although man never fails greatly to diminish, and is perhaps 

 destined ultimately to exterminate, such of the larger wild quad- 

 rupeds as he can not profitably domesticate, yet their numbers 

 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 fol- 

 lowed the French Revolution, the woK multiplied in many parts 

 of Europe, partly because the hunters were withdrawn from the 

 woods to chase a nobler game, and partly because the bodies of 

 slain men and horses supplied this voracious quadruped with 

 more abundant food.* The same animal became again more nu- 

 merous in Poland after the general disarming of the rural popu- 



* 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 de- 

 populated 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 seen in the memory of living men. 



