108 
ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA. 
great pine forests of Canada, the black bear and the puma, 
the lynx and the wolf bold in check the smaller animals which 
otherwise would overrun the land, whilst they in their turn 
by feeding on the herbage in its luxuriance, maintain the 
balance of vegetation, and by their oft forgotten hoards of 
winter provender, provide a store of nut and fruit bearing 
trees, to be in their turn the providers for some future 
race of rodents. Remaining still around the haunts of men 
are the smaller class always associated with him ; and the 
dread of him acquired at his first approach, becomes to them 
instinctive and hereditary. 
In conclusion, man’s necessities and pleasures, as they have 
been in the eastern hemisphere, will so be here, the cause of 
great changes : the inaccessible cliffs of the Indian territory 
will afford a refuge for the goat and the cimaron, but the 
time is fast approaching when the buffalo, the puma, the 
beaver, &c., will be known only by ancient records. Man 
himself, the lord of creation, though he extirpates the noble 
creatures of the earth, will ever be . the slave of the canker- 
worm and the fly till the time come for the final “restoration 
of all things,” and in the words of the poet, “ this mortal 
shall put on immortality.” 
