10 



wrought this change in the wild animal life of the State. The 

 clearing away of the forests, lumbering operations, forest fires, and 

 the trapper and hunter have followed up and harrassed the wild 

 animals that once abounded in our forests until the last represent- 

 atives of several species, hemmed in on every side, have .made their 

 last stand and fallen, or have stolen away to join their more for- 

 tunate fellows in the greater security of forest strongholds to the 

 north and the west. 



So far as the writer is aware, no systematic effort has been made 

 to record collectively the names, distribution and habits of the na- 

 tive mammals of West Virginia except in the ease of a briefly 

 annotated li.st by Thaddeus Surber, of White Sulphur Springs, that 

 was published in the report of the West Virginia Fish and Game 

 Protective Association, for 1909. It is rather surprising that this 

 important branch of zoology has been neglected so long by our 

 West Virginia naturalists. As an opportunity for the scientific 

 investigator and collector the field is full of interest while to the 

 economic nature student it is no less attractive. A large part of 

 the living of the early settler was derived from the meat and furs 

 of wild animals while his crops and flocks were menaced constant- 

 ly by squirrels, deer, bears, wolves and other wild mammals. Pres- 

 ent day conditions have changed the relation which the wild ani- 

 mals formerly bore to man but at the same time they have created 

 new problems of a similar nature. There are many mammals, es- 

 pecially among the rodents, that thrive and multiply in cleared, 

 or partly cleared lands. Some of these have become sources of 

 great annoyance on account of the damage that they do to culti- 

 vated crops; others, by reason of the numbers of tree seeds and 

 nuts which they destroy, must have considerable influence on for- 

 estry conditions ; still others devour vast numbers of injurious in- 

 sects and thus have a beneficial effect on the farm and in the for- 

 est. Altogether, both as regards the injuries they do las and the 

 benefits we derive from them, wild mammals have had and cou- 

 tinue to have an important part in shaping conditions under which 

 men live especially in agricultural districts. 



For several years the writer has at odd times collected data on 

 this subject and ventures to publish herewith a list of the known 

 living and recently extinct mammals of the State together wih 

 brief notes on the different species. The notes record a few origi- 



