30 Sport and Life. 



vast masses of worthless " tailings " and rock debris into fertile 

 valleys, turning some of the best tracts of California for ever into 

 a verdureless desert ; or by setting fire to the forests in spots likely 

 to contain mineral wealth. Thus were denuded by conflagrations, 

 which the writer has known to last in the Kootenay country and 

 along Puget Sound from May to October, thousands and tens of 

 thousands of square miles of country covered with the most superb 

 woods to be seen in any part of the world. 



Twenty years ago one C. J. Jones, following the example of 

 thousands of his fellow-frontiersmen engaged in hide hunting, 

 received 50 cents (2sh.} for each of the many thousands of bison 

 he killed. Fifteen years later bison were practically extinct, 

 save in the National preserve in Yellowstone Park, where game is 

 guarded by cavalry and by the machinery of law. And this same 

 man, more far-seeing than his fellows, has become a prosperous 

 bison-rancher, having raised a numerous herd of hundreds from the 

 seven calves with which he started. To judge by the last reports, 

 he finds a ready sale for his offspring at from 4Oodols. to looodols. 

 (80 to 200) per head, to zoological gardens and museums, and 

 crowds of sightseers gladly paid 2sh. for a peep at his beasts !* 



In the case of the wapiti, one factor that helped to ring his 

 death knell was the sudden discovery, made about twenty years 

 ago, that the skin of this deer, which formerly was considered the 

 most valueless game hide, because porous, was of use in certain 

 branches of the leather industry. And though the value of the 

 wapiti skin never approached that of the bison, it nevertheless, 

 when the latter animal became scarce, held out sufficient induce- 

 ments to hundreds of skin hunters to penetrate into distant hunting 

 grounds into which they otherwise would never have dreamt of 

 venturing.f This hide hunting, which went on until the most 



* Since writing the above, Jones has sold his herd. 



f Poland states that from 80,000 to 100,000 wapiti skins are imported into 

 England annually. The same writer mentions a curious circumstance, i.e., that 

 in 1.890 ihe Hudson Bay Company bought at -one time in London 910 Russian 

 elch skins for their Indians In Canada. 



