MAMMALIA. 
38 
are unable to move except by the greatest effort, and are soon ex- 
hausted. They sink to their bellies at every plunge, the sharp 
hoofs cutting through the frozen crust, which lacerates their 
slender legs till the tracks are stained with blood. The cruel foe 
is upon them, and well do they realize that the struggle is for 
life. Every muscle is strained to the utmost in the frantic ef- 
fort to escape, but in vain. Every leap tells bitterly on the fast- 
waning strength, and they soon sink in the snow, breathless and 
with heaving sides. Their large liquid eyes are turned toward 
their brutal pursuers, as if to implore mercy, but none is given. 
All share a like fate — they are butchered in cold blood. 
Deer Protection. 
For many years an army of hardy lumbermen, wood-choppers, 
and bark-peelers has been steadily at work, together with its con- 
comitant devastating fires, in making progressive and disastrous 
inroads upon the ill-fated forests of the Adirondacks. Much of the 
proper borders of the region, long since stripped of timber, pre- 
sent to the eye a desolate and barren waste, whose present irregu- 
lar boundaries are still corftracting with ominous rapidity. 
New saw-mills, pulp-mills, and numerous other manufacturing 
establishments that consume vast quantities of wood, are con- 
stantly being erected ; and, as if this were not enough, it is 
possible that before the snows of another winter cover the earth, 
a railroad will pierce the very heart of this grand Wilderness. 
It augurs ill for the Deer when the footprints of the panther or 
wolf are found near its winter quarters, but the cold steel tracks 
of the iron horse admonish us of the presence of a tenfold more 
insidious and subtle foe; for the railroad not only brings the Deer’s 
greatest enemy, man, into its immediate haunts, but destroys and 
carries off the forests that constitute its home. Hence it natural- 
ly follows that unless the region is early converted into a State 
Preserve, which, unfortunately, seems hardly probable, the laws that 
