OF THE ANIMALS OF CHASE. 261 



forest honors for maize and the cotton plant ; and 

 these wild animals have been destroyed, or driven 

 from their fastnesses, to seek more sequestered 

 haunts. Accordingly, no living man has seen a 

 wild buffalo in our confines. It is a rare thing to 

 encounter a panther (the skin of one, killed by the 

 late Col. Blanding, is preserved in Charleston). The 

 wolf is almost extinct ; the bears are fast diminish- 

 ing in number ; the deer, though still numerous in 

 given sections, are visibly thinned ; and it is only 

 the smaller animals, such as the foxes and wild-cats, 

 which are still numerous, or whose diminished 

 numbers have not been made the subject of re- 

 mark. 



THE BEAKS -Are not often made the objects of a 

 hunt. They frequent the deep swamps, into which, 

 in ordinary seasons, the sportsman would scarcely 

 be willing to penetrate. If pursued in their fast- 

 nesses by dogs, they would either beat them off, or 

 escape by clambering trees. There is little chance 

 of killing them, except when caught on their 

 marauding expeditions. To these they are often 

 tempted by their fondness for the ripening corn, on 

 which they commit nocturnal depredations ; and in 

 default of this, their favorite food, being omnivo- 

 rous, they sometimes attack the droves of hogs, as 



