90 EXTIRPATIOlSr OF WILD QUADRUPEDS. 



lation by the Russian Government. On the other hand, when 

 the hunters pursue the wolf, the graminivorous wild quadrupeds 

 increase, and thus in turn promote the multiplication of their great 

 four-footed destroyer by augmenting the supply of his nourish- 

 ment. So long as the fur of the beaver was extensively employed 

 as a material for hats, it bore a very high price, and the chase of 

 this quadruped was so keen that naturahsts feared its speedy ex- 

 tinction. When a Parisian manufacturer invented the silk hat, 

 which soon came into almost universal use, the demand for 

 beavers' fur fell off, and this animal — whose habits are an im- 

 portant agency in the formation of bogs and other modifications 

 of forest nature — immediately began to increase, reappeared in 

 haunts which he had long abandoned, and can no longer be re- 

 garded as rare enough to be in immediate danger of extirpation. 

 Thus the convenience or the caprice of Parisian fashion has un- 

 consciously exercised an influence which may sensibly aSect the 

 physical geography of a distant continent. 



Since the invention of gunpowder, some quadrupeds have com- 

 pletely disappeared from many European and Asiatic countries 

 where they were formerly numerous. The last wolf was killed 

 in Great Britain two hundred years ago, and the bear was extir- 

 pated from that island still earher. The hon is behoved to have 

 inhabited Asia Minor and Syria, and probably Greece and Sicily 

 also, long after the commencement of the historical period, and 

 he is even said to have been not yet extinct in the first-named two 

 of these countries at the time of the first crusade.* 



The British wild ox is extinct except in a few Enghsh and Scot- 

 tish parks, while in Irish bogs, of no great apparent antiquity, are 

 found antlers which testify to the former existence of a stag much 



* In maintaining the recent existence of the lion in the countries named in 

 the text, naturalists have, perhaps, laid too much weight on the frequent oc- 

 currence of representations of this animal in sculptures apparently of a histori- 

 cal character. It will not do to argue, twenty centuries hence, that the lion 

 and the unicorn were common in Great Britain in Queen Victoria's time, be- 

 cause they are often seen " fighting for the crown " in the carvings and paint- 

 ings of that period. Many palaeontologists, however, identify the great cat-like 

 animal, whose skeletons are frequently found in British bone-caves, with the 

 lion of our times. 



The leopard (panthera), though already growing scarce, was found in Cilicia 

 in Cicero's time. See his letter to Coeliils. Bpist. ad Diversos, Lib. II., Ep. 11. 



