84 
THE CABINET OF NATURAL HISTORY, 
In the northern plains, from the Orinoco to the lake of 
Maracaybo, M. Depons reckoned that one million two hun- 
dred thousand oxen, one hundred and eighty thousand 
horses, and ninety thousand mules, wandered at large. In 
some parts of the valley of the Mississippi, especially in 
t he country of the Osage Indians, wild horses are immensely 
numerous. 
The establishment of black cattle in America dates from 
Columbus’ second voyage to St. Domingo. They there 
multiplied rapidly ; and that island presently became a kind 
of nursery from which these animals were successively trans- 
ported to various parts of the continental coast, and from 
thence into the interior. Notwithstanding these numerous 
exportations, in twenty-seven years after the discovery of 
the islands, herds of four thousand head, as we learn from 
Oviedo, were not uncommon, and there were even some 
that amounted to eight thousand. In 15S7, the number of 
hides exported from St. Domingo alone, according to 
Acosta’s report, was thirty-five thousand four hundred 
and forty -four; and in the same year there were ex- 
ported sixty-four thousand three hundred and fifty from 
the ports of New Spain. This was in the sixty-fifth year 
after the taking of Mexico, previous to which event the Spa- 
niards, who came into that country, had not been able to 
engage in any thing else than war. 
All our readers are aware, that these animals are now 
established throughout the American continent, from Ca- 
nada to Paraguay. 
The ass has thriven very generally in the New World; 
and we learn from Ulloa, that in Quito they ran wild, and 
multiplied in amazing numbers, so as to become a nui- 
sance. They grazed together in herds, and, when attacked, 
defended themselves with their mouths. If a horse hap- 
pened to stray into the places where they fed, they all fell 
upon him, and did not cease biting and kicking till they 
left him dead. 
The first hogs were carried to America by Columbus, 
and established in the island of St. Domingo the year fol- 
lowing its discovery in November, 1493. In succeeding 
years they were introduced into other places where the 
Spaniards settled; and, in the space of half a century, they 
were found established in the New World, from the lati- 
tude of 25° north, to the 40th degree of south latitude. 
Sheep, also, and goats have multiplied enormously in the 
New World, as have also the cat and the rat, which last 
has been imported unintentionally in ships. The dogs 
introduced by man, which have at different periods become 
wild in America, hunted in packs like the wolf and the 
jackal, destroying not only hogs, but the calves and foals 
of the wild cattle and horses. 
IJlloa in his voyage, and Buffon on the authority of old 
writers, relate a fact which illustrates very clearly the prin- 
ciple of the check which the increase of one animal neces- 
sarily offers to that of another. The Spaniards had intro- 
duced goats into the island of Juan Fernandez, where they 
became so prolific as to furnish the pirates who infested 
those seas with provisions. In order to cut off this re- 
source from the buccaneers, a number of dogs were turned 
loose into the island; and so numerous did they become in 
their turn, that they destroyed the goats in every accessi- 
ble part, after which the number of the wild dogs again 
decreased. 
As an example of the rapidity with which a large tract 
may become peopled by the offspring of a single pair of 
quadrupeds, we may mention that in the year 1773 thir- 
teen rein-deer were exported from Norway, only three of 
which reached Iceland. These were turned loose into the 
mountains of Guldbringe Syssel, where they multiplied 
so greatly, in the course of forty years, that it was not un- 
common to nieet with herds consisting of from forty to one 
hundred in various districts. 
In Lapland, observes a modern writer, the rein-deer is 
a loser by his connexion with man, but Iceland will be 
this creature’s paradise. There is, in the interior, a tract 
which Sir G. Mackenzie computes at not less than forty 
thousand square miles, without a single human habitation, 
and almost entirely unknown to the natives themselves. 
There are no wolves; the Icelander will keep out the bears; 
and the rein-deer, being almost unmolested by man, will 
have no enemy whatever, unless it has brought with it its 
own tormenting gad-fly. 
Besides the quadrupeds before enumerated by us, our 
domestic fowls have also succeeded in the West Indies and 
America, where they have the common fowl, the goose, the 
duck, the peacock, the pigeon, and the guinea-fowl. As 
these were often taken suddenly from the temperate to 
very hot regions, they were not reared at first without 
much difficulty: but after a few generations they became 
familiarized to the climate, which, in many cases, ap- 
proached much nearer than that of Europe to the tempera- 
ture of their original native countries. 
The fact of so many millions of wild and tame individuals 
of our domestic species, almost all of them the largest quad- 
rupeds and birds, having been propagated throughout the 
new continent within the short period that has elapsed 
since the discovery of America, while no appreciable im- 
provement can have been made in the productive powers 
of that vast continent, affords abundant evidence of the 
extraordinary changes which accompany the diffusion and 
progressive advancement of the human race over the globe. 
That it should have remained for us to witness such mighty 
revolutions is a proof, even if there was no other evidence, 
