17 
winch few of them in all probability lived to extricate themselves, 
who would have dreamed of the survival in the present day of 
this Dolphin, “ come back as it were from the dead ” ? 
One more northern animal deserves a passing notice here, because 
of its rapidly decreasing numbers. The 'Walrus has been the 
object of unceasing persecution, and has been driven from one 
locality to another till it is now rarely found so far south as GO® 
north latitude. Vast herds of these animals formerly existed in 
the Arctic seas, but wherever met with it was an object of ruthle.ss 
liersecution, and but from its present strongholds being always 
diflicult, sometimes impossible of approach, it would doubtless long 
eie this have become extinct. A like fate, although perhaps more 
distant, is in store for the northern Seals, which arc .slaughtered so 
ruthlessly and in such a wasteful manner for their oil, that their 
numbers are decreasing with alarming rapidity. 
Perhaps no animal suflers more severely at the hand of man 
than the American Pison. At the commencement of the pre.sent 
century it roamed in vast herds from the north-western corner of 
the Gulf of Mexico in the south, to the Great Slave Lake in the 
north, and from the Pocky Mountains in the west to the 
Mississippi and Lake V innipeg in the east ; having even at that 
time already disappeared from a vast tract of country lying to the 
cast of that river, including parts of the States of Mississippi, 
iennessee, Porth and South Cai’olina, Western Virginia, Pennsyl- 
vania, and New \ork, and bounded on the north by the southern 
shores of Lakes Erie and Michigan. Over tliis vast extent of 
country the Bisons swarmed in countless herds, blackening the 
prairies with their multitudes, and leaving tracts still unobliterated 
by time. The multitudes of these animals formerly seen by 
travellers cannot be estimated, and days were spent in passing 
through the great herds scattered over the prairies, which, now ala.s, 
in many cases are covered only with their bleaching bones.* Hunted 
* In the years 1872-3-4 no less than 10,793,300 pounds of bones were 
carried by the Atcliison, Topeka, an<l Santa Fe Railway : J. A. Allen, “ The 
American Bison,” ‘ Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at 
Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass.’ vol. iv. (1876) p. 190. 
VOL. HI. 
c 
