136 



MAMMALIA. 



are unable to move except by the greatest effort, and are soon ex- 

 hausted. They sink to their belHes at every phinge, the sharp 

 hoofs cutting through the frozen crust, which lacerates their 

 slender legs till the tracks are stained with blood. The cruel foe 

 is upon them, and well do they realize that the struggle is for 

 life. Every muscle is strained to the utmost in the frantic ef- 

 fort to escape, but in vain. Every leap tells bitterly on the fast- 

 waning strength, and they soon sink in the snow, breathless and 

 with heaving sides. Their large Hquid eyes are turned toward 

 their brutal pursuers, as if to implore mercy, but none is given. 

 All share a like fate — they are butchered in cold blood. 



Deer Proteetion. 



For many years an army of hardy lumbermen, wood-choppers, 

 and bark-peelers has been steadily at work, together with its con- 

 comitant devastating fires, in making progressive and disastrous 

 inroads upon the ill-fated forests of the Adirondacks. Much of the 

 proper borders of the region, long since stripped of timber, pre- 

 sent to the eye a desolate and barren waste, whose present irregu- 

 lar boundaries are still contracting with ominous rapidity. 



New saw-mills, pulp-mills, and numerous other manufacturing 

 establishments that consume vast quantities of wood, are con- 

 stantly being erected ; and, as if this were not enough, it is 

 possible that before the snows of another winter cover the earth, 

 a railroad will pierce the very heart of this grand Wilderness. 



It augurs ill for the Deer when the footprints of the panther or 

 wolf are found near its winter quarters, but the cold steel tracks 

 of the iron horse admonish us of the presence of a tenfold more 

 insidious and subtle foe; for the railroad not only brings the Deer's 

 greatest enemy, man, into its immediate haunts, but destroys and 

 carries off the forests that constitute its home. Hence it natural- 

 ly follows that unless the region is early converted into a State 

 Preserve, which, unfortunately, seems hardly probable, the laws that 



