ANIMALS OF THE PRIMITIVE FOREST. 15 



While the royal forests yielded these creatures a shelter 

 and abode, the cultivated lands near their bounds afforded 

 them subsistence ; and they must have multiplied more 

 rapidly in proportion to the increase of human population 

 than in America after its settlement, where very different 

 circumstances and events were witnessed. 



America was colonized and occupied by civilized people, 

 and the forests were swept away with a rapidity unpre- 

 cedented in the history of man. Every pioneer was a 

 hunter provided with guns and ammunition ; every male 

 member of his family over seven years of age was a gun- 

 ner and a trapper. The sparse inhabitants of the forest, 

 which if unmolested, as in the early period of European 

 civilization, would have multiplied in proportion to their 

 increased means of subsistence, have been, on the con- 

 trary, shot by the gunner, insnared by the trapper, and 

 wantonly destroyed by boys for amusement, until some 

 species have been nearly exterminated. Instead of in- 

 creasing in a ratio with the supplies of their natural food, 

 many tribes of them are now more scarce than they were 

 in the primitive forest. The small birds alone, whose 

 prolific habits and diminutive size were their protection, 

 have greatly multiplied. 



But even if birds and quadrupeds were unmolested by 

 man, there are some tribes that would prefer to reside in 

 the deep wood, while others would fix their abode in or- 

 chards and gardens. The wild pigeon has not been favored 

 in any respect by the clearing of the forest. The food of 

 this species is abundantly supplied in the wilds of na- 

 ture in the product of beechen woods, hazel copses, 

 groves of the chinquapin oak, and of the shores, of lakes 

 and arms of the sea covered with Canada rice and 

 the maritime pea-vine. Their immense powers of flight 

 enable them to transport themselves to new feeding- 

 grounds after any present stock is exhausted, and to wing 



