1876.] Former Range of New England Mammals. 709 
Fh i .;’ 
local for their destruction. As I have elsewhere shown,! 
the money paid for the destruction of noxious animals often 
amounted to a very large draft upon the treasuries of the differ- 
ent towns, in some instances nearly equaling the amount expended 
forall other purposes. The offer of rewards for their capture 
proved, as was intended, a great incentive to their destruction, 
but since many of the carnivorous species yielded also products 
of a high commercial value, they were likewise eagerly pursued 
for their furs. In the case of the beaver, the fisher, the sable, 
and the musk-rat, the demands of the fur trade alone tended to 
the rapid decrease of a few species not among the legally pro- 
scribed. The different species of the deer family were hunted 
both for their flesh and for their skins. Add to these incentives 
the pleasures of the chase, which toa large class of sportsmen are 
a more satisfactory reward than its more tangible products, and 
the almost incredibly rapid decrease of many species need be no 
longer a subject of surprise. 
he early accounts of the exploration and settlement of New 
England abound with references to the abundance of the game 
animals of the country, and furnish reliable evidence of the for- 
_ Mer more extended range of many of the species and the much 
= greater abundance of all. The woods are often spoken of as 
- filled with wild animals,.among which the most numerous were 
beavers, foxes, wolves, bears, moose, deer, raccoons, and martens ; 
| lynxes were common, as was also that ‘“ most insidious and deadly 
. foe of human kind, the catamount.” The range of the cata- 
mount or panther (Felis concolor) extends, as is well known, from 
Northern New England southward not only to the Gulf of Mex- 
aa but throughout the greater part of South America. It long 
since, however, disappeared from the southern half of New En- 
~ gand, as well as from most of the more settled parts of the 
United States everywhere ; the capture during the last ten years 
of an occasional individual in the Green Mountains and in the 
forest region of Northern New Hampshire and Maine shows that 
; a still lingers in Northern New England, where it is slowly but 
: Surely becoming extirpated. The lynxes (Lynx Canadensis and 
: i rufus ?), doubtless always far more numerous 
; — Monthly, October, 187 
ve recently pointed 
than the pan- 
ee (Bulletin United States Geological and Geo- 
5, July, 1876), these so-called species, 
ight differences of coloration, consist- 
L. “ Canadensis” as com- 
f the transverse 
naa Survey of the Territories, ii. 222-22 
ing iy en i be distinguished by merely sl ‘ 
abe | in the grayer tints and less distinct markings of 
with L. “rufus,” especially in the tendency to obsoleteness © 
