406 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



were to fatten?"* Colonel H. Inman, late Assistant-Quarter- 

 master of the U. S. Army, in his ' The Old Santa Fe Trail,' states 

 that in Kansas alone, between 1868-81, 2,500,000 dols. were 

 paid out for Buffalo bones gathered in the plains, and used by the 

 carbon companies. The price paid averaged eight dollars per 

 ton of bones, so that according to his calculation the above sum 

 represented the skeletons of over 31,000,000 Buffalo.! In 1885 

 Peccaries were so abundant in the counties of Medina, Uvalde, 

 and Zavalla, Texas, that their well-known trails were everywhere 

 to be seen, while their favourite haunts could be readily picked 

 out by the peculiar musty odour characteristic of these little 

 animals. Shortly after this date, hogskin goods being in favour, 

 a price of fifty cents each was offered for Peccary hides, with the 

 result that by 1890 the Peccaries had become practically exter- 

 minated, i In 1873 Leith Adams stated that "the Moose is 

 decreasing steadily ; indeed, considering the wholesale destruc- 

 tion practised by settlers and Indians, it is remarkable how many 

 survive. "§ 



The hunting spirit is still strong in America. Mr. T. S. 

 Palmer states that in the United States several States now 

 require both residents and non-residents to secure licences before 

 hunting. The returns for 1903 show that in ten of the States 

 which have such a system, viz. Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Michi- 

 gan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Washington, Wis- 

 consin, and Wyoming, the total number of licensed hunters was 

 261,241. The largest numbers in any of these States were 

 73,823 in Wisconsin and 95,250 in Illinois, and the average in 

 all was 26,124. " The destruction which an army of 26,000 

 hunters roaming at will over any State might bring about is 

 beyond computation." || Again, according to the same writer, 

 the population of the United States, on June 1st, 1905, exclusive 

 of Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Bico, was estimated by the Census 

 Bureau at 82,565,005, and the population of the sixteen States 

 which issued both resident and non-resident licences at 



* Cf. Baillie-Grohrnan, 'Fifteen Years' Sport and Life,' &c, p. 29. 



f Ibid., p. 169. 



\ Lucas, ' Rep. Nat. Mus. Washington,' 1891, pp. 610-11. 



§ ' Field and Forest Rambles,' p. 90. 



|| 'Yearbook Dept. Agric' 1904, p. 511. 



