2 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



full use. To the list of species he selected I have added a few 

 others that, as the work progressed, seemed to require treat- 

 ment. Possibly others should have been included, such as the 

 three-banded armadillo, which though still found in parts of 

 Brazil, seems now to have an interrupted range and may have 

 been locally exterminated for food. Possibly, too, various 

 species of mammals have been in part exterminated by pre- 

 historic peoples, if the evidence now accumulating is to be 

 trusted that primitive weapons found in association with 

 skeletons of extinct species of bison and mammoth in parts of 

 our West are proof of the killing of some of the survivors of 

 these species by human contemporaries. There is some evi- 

 dence, though of a rather uncertain nature, that in southern 

 South America prehistoric man was contemporary with species 

 of ungulates, now extinct, the remains of which date from the 

 Pampean time of late Pleistocene. Such animals have been 

 omitted, however, since the present inquiry does not extend so 

 far back into the past. 



Although few modern species of New World or marine 

 mammals have been directly exterminated by man, it is never- 

 theless true that almost any of those having a considerable 

 value for food, fur, oil, or other products, as well as those 

 having a less tangible interest as game animals for trophies, 

 are likely to be endangered increasingly with the more intensive 

 methods of modern times and with the growth of populations 

 and consequent reduction of areas available for their support. 

 With the settlement of this hemisphere by Europeans, the 

 control measures they imposed on the native mammals were 

 naturally directed first against the larger predators wolves, 

 pumas, bears that menaced their meager flocks or even at 

 times endangered their own lives. Clearing of forests for 

 agricultural purposes had an immediate effect in reducing the 

 available food and shelter for sylvan species and thus indirectly 

 in driving out or eliminating some of these. Probably this 

 factor has been a potent one in the extinction of various fruit- 

 eating bats of the West Indian islands. The growing demands 

 of the fur trade, with its increasing inroads on the fur bearers, 

 have resulted in great reduction of native stocks in many re- 

 gions, even those remote from civilization where professional 

 trappers have for long periods pursued the more valuable 

 species unremittingly. The large game animals, which fur- 



