102 
ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA. 
destruction, thus increasing the proportion, already far too 
great, of surviving males, and dooming the race to earlier 
extinction. But the white man is by no means his only 
destroyer. The Indian watches for him in every thicket ; 
by every wooded brook-side, the calf that goes down to 
quench his thirst, is unwittingly slain by an arrow through 
his loins. The gray wolf lurks in every hollow, and sneaks 
through every ravine, watching ravenously for some heed- 
less cow — some foolish calf — some wounded or aged hull to 
straggle to one side, or fall limpingly behind, where a spring 
from his hiding place, a snap at the victim’s ham-strings, 
will leave nothing to chance but the appearance of some 
hungry compatriot to claim a dividend of the spoil. But the 
wolf and the Indian are not wantonly destructive, they kill 
to eat, and stop when their appetites are glutted. Civilized 
man alone kills for the mere pleasure of destroying — the 
pride of having killed. For thousands of years the wolf and 
the Indian fed and feasted on the buffalo, yet the race multi- 
plied and diffused itself from the Hudson and Delaware, to 
the Columbia and Sacramento ; from the Ottawa and Sas- 
katchewan to the Alabama and the Brazos. But civilized 
man with his insatiate rapacity, and enginery of firearms has 
been on his track, and already his range has shrunk to one 
tenth its former dimensions, and the noble brute is palpably 
doomed to early extinction. 
