THE ATLANTIC FOREST REGION 387 



and barn. The robin nests within handreach of the door-sill, and the 

 wren and martin, leaving their old homes in the forest to some wood- 

 pecker more lazy than his fellows, scold and quarrel for the possession 

 of any hole or box so long as it is near the dwelling places of men. 



The effect of forest clearing and settlement on the larger wild 

 animals of the region was even more striking, since it caused their 

 rapid disappearance from the vicinity of cultivated land. The wild 

 animal life of the larger sort is always in inverse proportion to the 

 increase of an agricultural population. The indigenous fauna increases 

 in a land of aboriginal hunting folk of low culture, but decreases 

 swiftly and surely in contact with civilized men. Aboriginal man is 

 part of the fauna of a region. As a species he has struck a balance 

 with other indigenous species of animals and as such is a " natural 

 race." Like the lower animals the native man also vanishes from the 

 region of settlement. 



Of the lower mammals which inhabited the Atlantic forest region 

 in aboriginal times the gray timber wolf was conspicuous, as all early 

 records relate. It has not entirely disappeared from the wilder tracts, 

 especially in the remote northern forest, even at this late day. The 

 bear still lingers in more or less security on the outskirts of settle- 

 ment, his vegetarian tendencies rendering him a far less formidable 

 animal than some of his former neighbors. Of these last the cougar, 

 variously known as puma, panther or " painter," was a desperate char- 

 acter and has been hunted out even from the more remote wilderness. 

 His relative, the bay lynx or wild cat, may still be met with in deep 

 mountain woods. Of the deer tribe, the common or Virginian deer 

 ("buck" in the colloquial tongue) is fairly numerous in many parts 

 of the wild country, largely as a result of protection. The case of the 

 wapiti or " elk," however, is different. This great deer at one time 

 dwelt along the wooded ranges of the Appalachians, probably in some 

 parts extending its migrations to tide- water (upper Chesapeake Eivers) 

 as witnessed by various local place names. The deep wilderness of 

 coniferous forest to the north, remote and little disturbed by European 

 invasion, is inhabited by two species of deer — the moose and the caribou 

 — which are still fairly numerous. A difference in habits, as well as 

 in aboriginal distribution, may account for the persistence of these 

 two deer, as compared with the elk, in the Atlantic region. The 

 elk is gregarious by nature and in the early history of the country was 

 found in large herds, sometimes a hundred or more individuals, fre- 

 quenting the open beaver meadows and the timber of river bottoms 

 throughout the Appalachians. The moose and the caribou, on the 

 other hand, rarely associate in any considerable numbers and frequent 

 more inaccessible places, as tamarack thickets and the heavy growth 

 of spruce and birch woods. 



At the time of the discovery, and possibly long before, the bison 



