298 MAN AND NATURE, 



can often succeed in greatly reducing the number, or 

 removing altogether from a particular region those 

 which are injurious to him. Bears, wolves, and wild 

 boars have all been extirpated in England by direct 

 destruction. The bear ranged our forests in the time of 

 the first Norman kings. The wolf and the wild boar 

 were known in Great Britain at a much later date. The 

 crane, the bustard, the bittern have disappeared from 

 our Eastern counties, but more in effect of advancing 

 cultivation than of any direct agency of Man. Such 

 changes or extirpations are, of course, less frequent in 

 countries thinly peopled and in the rear of civilisation ; 

 yet instances of the kind, and seemingly of recent date, 

 have occurred in New Zealand and other islands of the 

 great Southern Ocean. 



The tropical forests, jungles, and plains will probably 

 long retain their carnivora and pachydermatous species ; 

 which nevertheless, and despite the uses derived from 

 some of them, are diminishing in number, and will pro- 

 bably in the end disappear under the encroachments of 

 Man, and the more certain and deadly weapons he now 

 employs. Whether species, either animal or vegetable, 

 can ever become extinct by mere lapse of time, and 

 changes producing default in the propagating power, 

 is a deeper question, which cannot be answered upon 

 any knowledge we now possess. 



The power of Man to augment the amount of ani- 

 mal life in such species as are necessary or convenient 

 to him, is too familiar to need much illustration. There 

 is, of course, a limit which nature in every different 

 country imposes on this power, either by climate, soil, 



