386 WILD ANIMALS. 



the end of tlie seventeentli century. Now, two hundred years later, 

 the picture is a changed one. Indians and white men, sportsmen 

 and trappers, fur-dealers and squatters, the tax-payers of the United 

 States and Canada, and the statesmen of both these countries, 

 bemoan the disappearance of the buffalo. For in a few more 

 years the animal will be extinct, and classed with the mastodon 

 among the mammals that "have been." Several newspapers 

 during the last few months, have made the statement, which is 

 said to emanate from a government source, that the vast herds 

 of buffaloes have become so reduced, that the few left do not 

 number in the aggregate a thousand head, and even this remnant of 

 the millions are scattered over a territory half as big as Europe 

 proper. These figures are no doubt an incorrect estimate, and the 

 number of the animals in all America must be considerably in 

 excess of any such limit, for besides the herd in British territory 

 there is another one protected by the United States Government 

 in the Yellowstone Natural Park, and a few still exist on the plains 

 between the James river and the Missouri, and about the forty- 

 sixth parallel, also in other places, but the fact is beyond con- 

 troversy, that they are diminishing with fearful rapidity, and for 

 practical purposes are already extinct. In Dakota, a few months 

 ago, an old bull buffalo was driven into Fort Meade along with 

 a lot of domestic cattle by the cow-boys, and he was supposed 

 to be the last of his race in that State,for if he had any fellows 

 the most diUgent search failed to find them or their traces. 



The extension'of the various towns and villages, the constant 

 settlement of new lands, and the steady increase in the population 

 of America, gradually drove the buffaloes into a narrower belt of 

 country in the interior, and here the white man, and the red man, 

 since he has learnt the use of powder and shot, have simply 

 butchered the animals in such a reckless, foolish manner, that 

 if they had been engaged to accomphsh their extermination in 

 a given time, it could hardly have been done more thoroughly. 

 Animals were killed by every man and boy that carried a rifle 

 or a gun, and could get, or accidentally came within range 

 of them, and this was done merely for the sake of killing, for the 

 body, just as it fell, would in thousands of instances be left to rot. 



