1 6 THE WILDERNESS HUNTER. 



beginning of our era. Great woods of pine 

 and fir, birch and beech, oak and chestnut ; 

 streams where the chief game fish are spotted 

 trout and silvery salmon ; grouse of various 

 kinds as the most common game birds ; all 

 these the hunter finds as characteristic of the 

 New World as of the Old. So it is with most 

 of the beasts of the chase, and so also with 

 the fur-bearing animals that furnish to the 

 trapper alike his life work and his means of 

 livelihood. The bear, wolf, bison, moose, 

 caribou, wapiti, deer, and bighorn, the lynx, 

 fox, wolverine, sable, mink, ermine, beaver, 

 badger, and otter of both worlds are either 

 identical or more or less closely kin to one 

 another. Sometimes of the two forms, that 

 found in the Old World is the largest. Per- 

 haps more often the reverse is true, the 

 American beast being superior in size. This 

 is markedly the case with the wapiti, which is 

 merely a giant brother of the European stag, 

 exactly as the fisher is merely a very large 

 cousin of the European sable or marten. The 

 extraordinary prong-buck, the only hollow- 

 horned ruminant which sheds its horns an- 

 nually, is a distant representative of the Old- 

 World antelopes of the steppes; the queer 

 white antelope-goat has for its nearest kinsfolk 

 certain Himalayan species. Of the animals 

 commonly known to our hunters and trappers, 

 only a few, such as the cougar, peccary, rac- 

 coon, possum (and among birds the wild 

 turkey), find their nearest representatives and 

 type forms in tropical America. 



Of course this general resemblance does not 

 mean identity. The differences in plant life 



