174 



THREATENED EXTINCTION OF THE ELK. 



Both tradition and written history, in the tales of travel by the earliest 

 settlers and explorers of North America, assert this, and the names of 

 streams and hills confirm it; just as it is positively known that the bison 

 formerly ranged eastward as far as western New York, and thence south- 

 ward to the Oarolinas, Arkansas, and Texas. This was in addition to all 

 the great fields of the far West to which the elks have been driven by the 

 advance of farming and the growth of towns and railways. I fear it will 

 not be long before they will become almost as rare, even in our wildest 

 north-western mountains and table-lands, as are those noble stags of the 

 Scotch Highlands which our elks so closely resemble. 



