18 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



destruction of the forests, brought about results that were 

 most disastrous to the larger mammals. It was this latter 

 cause, perhaps, more than all else, that affected the larger 

 animals of New Jersey, within historic times; for, as their 

 haunts were invaded by the settler, they were driven first 

 to the remote mountain, forest-clad swamps, and then 

 westward, as was the Indian; and the presence ever 

 afterward of the European prevented, in great measure, 

 their return even to those localities where a new forest- 

 growth replaced the old. Notwithstanding all these ad- 

 verse conditions, the bear and deer still linger within our 

 boundaries, while the wolf has only been exterminated 

 within fifty years, and the elk and beaver almost as re- 

 cently. That all the animals mentioned were once com- 

 mon here is proved by the presence of their bones in 

 the shell-heaps or kitchen-middens of the Indians, and 

 also by the accounts of the early travelers and settlers. 

 Especially are we indebted to Peter Kalm, the Swedish 

 naturalist, for many most interesting details of the fauna 

 of the country as it was a century and a half ago ; and 

 it is most instructive to compare his account of the habits 

 of the mammals, that were then found here, with our 

 own experience of the fauna that still remains among 

 us. For instance, writing of New Jersey, in 1748, he 

 says: 



" Bears are very numerous higher up in the country, 

 and do much mischief. Mr. Bartram told me that when 

 a bear catches a cow, he kills her in the following man- 

 ner : he bites a hole into the hide, and blows with all his 

 power into it, till the animal swells excessively and dies " ; 

 and again: " They have two varieties of wolves here, which, 

 however, seem to be of the same species. . . . All the old 

 Swedes related that during their childhood, and still 

 more at the arrival of their fathers, there were excessive 



