OUR MAMMALS IN GENERAL. 19 



numbers of wolves in the country, and that their howling 

 and yelping might be heard all night. They likewise 

 frequently tore in pieces sheep, hogs, and other young 

 and small cattle." But a few years afterward they 

 seemed suddenly to decrease in numbers, for in the year 

 mentioned Kalm tells us that " they are now seldom 

 seen, and it is very rarely that they commit any disorders. 

 This is attributed to the greater cultivation of the coun- 

 try, and to their being killed in great numbers. But 

 further up the country (i. e., up the Delaware Valley), 

 where it is not yet so much inhabited, they are still very 

 abundant." 



Some of our smaller mammals, on the other hand, ap- 

 pear to have been benefited by the change from a wild 

 to a cultivated country, as, for instance, the squirrels, of 

 which Kalm says : " The several sorts of squirrels among 

 the quadrupeds have spread : for these . . . live chiefly 

 upon maize, or at least they are most greedy of it." 



Speaking of one other well-known mammal, now no 

 longer found in New Jersey, the same author writes : 

 " Beavers were formerly abundant in New Sweden " 

 (New Jersey), " as all the old Swedes here told me. At 

 that time they saw one bank after another raised in the 

 rivers by beavers. But after the Europeans came over 

 in great numbers and cultivated the country better, the 

 beavers have been partly killed and partly extirpated, 

 and partly removed higher into the country, where the 

 people are not so numerous. Therefore there is but a 

 single place in Pennsylvania where beavers are to be met 

 with ; their chief food is the bark of the beaver-tree, or 

 Magnolia glauca, which they prefer to any other." 



Deprived of so many of these most interesting animals, 

 it would seem as if the limited areas of woodland still re- 

 maining were destitute of any features of mammalian life 



