CIVILIZING INFLUENCES. 183 



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During the last two and a half centuries white men have 

 spread everywhere, and in almost every part of the conti- 

 nent 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 with 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 ani- 

 mals, birds included, would have been so harassed by their 

 changed surroundings and the persecutions of human foes, 

 that they would have rapidly disappeared. With the vast 

 majority of the quadrupeds 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 that a few 

 decades ago was abundant almost at his door. It has been 

 much the same with wildfowl and game birds. They have 

 deserted their ancient nesting -places within our borders 

 for the safer Arctic heaths, or old and young have been all 

 but exterminated by gun and snare. Nevertheless, a large 

 number of the smaller birds of our woodlands and prairies, 

 as I hope to show, have been decidedly benefited by the 

 advent of white men. I know of but one sort of quad- 

 ruped field-mice of which this can also be said. 



