ANIMALS OP NORTH AMERICA. 107 



graduates. From the Hudson Bay territory, where we 

 ought to look for the most information, from their commerce 

 in peltries and contact with rude Nature, very little has been 

 gained ; hut if the time ever arrives that a railway connecting 

 the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific shall be carried through 

 British America, not only the whereabouts of certain species, 

 now only known as rare in their present haunts, will be 

 definitely ascertained, but facilities will be afforded the 

 scientific enquirer and the sportsman to meet them on their 

 own ground. 



The diversity of climate met with in so large a continent 

 naturally adds to the developement of its species ; and, 

 according to the different localities traversed, so Nature has, 

 with infinite skill, adapted their inhabitants. For instance, 

 in traversing the mighty prairies the mind assumes the idea 

 of isolation : westward, onwards, without a mountain, with 

 scarcely a hill, with rarely a brook or stream to break the 

 monotony of the barren, dewless landscape ; loneliness seems 

 the traveller's concomitant. But a nearer gaze reveals the 

 life there ; at intervals the fleet antelope looks shyly down 

 from some distant crest, then is off on the wings of the wind ; 

 the gray wolf more rarely surveys him deliberately, and 

 slinks away ; the prairie wolf lingers near, safe in his own 

 worthlessness and the traveller's contempt ; the funny frisky 

 little prairie dog barks with amusing alarm at his approach, 

 then drops into his hole ; slowly, on easy pinion, the hawk 

 circles in the air, and swoops down on the prairie squirrel or 

 the mole ; lazily the crow leaps from carcass to carcass, too 

 plethoric to caw, too indolent to be frightened. 



Away in the wilds of the Rocky Mountain range, the 

 grizzly bear roams amid his fastnesses, his color harmo- 

 nizing with the brown, gray and weather beaten crags of his 

 mountain home ; while his relatives in the far off icebergs 

 and glacier-clad hills of the Arctic zone is as spotless in his 

 snowy robes, as the prospect around him. Away in the 



