208 STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS 



and trees was obtained from the disintegration of the minute 

 shell covering of myriads and myriads of far remoter ancestors. 

 These shell coverings had been hoarded ages ago in the rocks, 

 or on the debris of rocks on which those grasses and trees grew ! 



In the Royal Natural History ', vol. ii. p. 193, it is written that, 

 'of all the quadrupeds that have ever lived upon the earth, 

 probably no other species has ever marshalled such innumerable 

 hosts as those of the American Bison. It would have been as 

 easy to count or to estimate the number of leaves in a forest 

 as to calculate the number of Bison living at any given time 

 during the history of the species previous to 1870. ... As 

 an instance of these enormous numbers, it appears that, in 

 the early part of the year 1871, Colonel Dodge, when passing 

 through the great herd on the Arkansas, and reckoning that 

 there were some fifteen or twenty individuals to the acre, states, 

 from his own observation, that it was not less than 25 miles 

 wide and 50 miles deep,' and was reckoned to consist of not 

 less than four millions. * Many writers, at and about the date 

 mentioned, speak of the plains being absolutely black with Bison 

 as far as the eye could reach.' It is even stated that trains were 

 sometimes derailed on the Kansas Pacific Railway when attempt- 

 ing to plough their way through these crowds of Bison. 



The reckless destruction of these useful animals, for the sake 

 of their fine skins, has left little more than ' huge stacks of skulls 

 piled up at many of the railway stations awaiting transport,' 

 perhaps to make bone-black for refining sugar. Such is the 

 irony of nature ! 



Mr. Hutchinson, 1 quoting from Darwin, on the American 

 continent, says 'Formerly it must have swarmed with great 

 monsters ; now we find mere pigmies compared with the antecedent 



1 Creatures of Other Days, p. 248. 



