Scton’s Northern Animals 
The last days of 1909 witnessed the appear¬ 
ance of a work on North American mammals., 
which, from the non-technical scientific stand¬ 
point, is the most important contribution to this 
subject since the days of Audubon and Bach¬ 
man. It is a work of popular natural history 
on a strictly scientific basis in which are treated 
sixty quadrupeds found in Manitoba. These 
sixty quadrupeds include all the large land 
mammals of the United States except about a 
dozen, and thus cover most of the big game 
of North America. While Mr. Seton’s secon¬ 
dary title, “The Mammals of Manitoba,” thus 
strictly limits the scope of his work, these mam¬ 
mals of Manitoba are found far and wide over 
the continent, and the author has followed them 
all over their range; for his field work has not 
been confined to any one limited section. His 
inquiries have covered the whole continent from 
the Mexican boundary north, almost or quite to 
the Barren Grounds. 
Mr. Seton is well known as a field naturalist 
of wide experience and training. He has had 
thirty years of work in the field, and the time 
so spent has not been wasted. It was in Mani¬ 
toba that he began his work of studying birds 
and mammals, and his most important scientific 
work has had to do with the life of that prov¬ 
ince. It is natural, therefore, that the present 
work should have received this title. 
The opening pages of the work are import¬ 
ant. His introduction deals with the physical 
features of the province, with the faunal areas 
and life zones of Canada, illustrated by maps, 
and finally with the faunal areas in Manitoba. 
Then follows a discussion of the general plan 
of treatment for each species of animals. These 
are life histories that we are to read, and Mr. 
Seton treats his different species in relation to 
their lives. He says, “My theme is the living 
animal.” To treat each animal as fully and 
systematically as possible in relation to its life 
he has considered each under no less than thirty 
different heads or subjects. Some of these are 
obvious enough, such as name, description, meas¬ 
urement, range, home range, migration and so 
on; others are entirely novel, as the ideas—or 
suggestions of ideas—of property, sanitation, 
love of the beautiful, morality, vice, crime and 
so on possessed by different animals. 
Mr. Seton holds that the physical side of each 
animal being a product of evolution, we may 
look—even in these forms of life so much lower 
than the mental states we are accustomed to 
consider—for the beginnings of mental evolu¬ 
tion. He thus takes a far wider view of the 
life of animals than has before been taken. 
This is in line with something that he wrote 
years ago, and while some may consider his 
♦Life-Histories of Northern Animals; an Account of 
the Mammals of Manitoba, by Ernest Thompson Seton, 
Naturalist to the Government of Manitoba. Volume I.— 
Grass-Eaters (pages i-xxx+1-673). Volume II.— Flesh- 
Eaters (pages i-xii-M575-1267). With sixty-eight maps 
and 560 drawings by the authpr. Published by Charles 
Scribner’s Sons, New \ork City, 1909. Price, $1S. 
views more or less fanciful, no one will deny 
that what he says is very suggestive. 
The first volume includes the hoofed animals 
and rodents; the wapiti or elk, Northern white¬ 
tailed deer, mule deer, moose, caribou, prong¬ 
horned antelope and buffalo, with the squirrels, 
beavers, mice, gophers, kangaroo mice, porcu¬ 
pine and hares. The second volume deals with 
the carnivora, insectivora and the bats. Of the 
cats only the Canada lynx is found. The gray 
wolf, prairie wolf, red fox and kit fox repre¬ 
sent the dogs; the otter, wolverine, badger, 
fisher, marten, skunk, weasels, raccoon and the 
grizzly and black bear cover many of our land 
fur-bearers. The little known shrews and moles 
make up the insectivora, and there are six 
species of bats. 
Every page of the work is of deep interest 
to the naturalist, yet it is obvious that the first 
half of each volume will present especial attrac¬ 
tions to the big-game hunter who is also an 
observer. Omitting races and sub-species we find 
that all the American ungulates except the Co¬ 
lumbian deer, wild sheep, white goat and musk¬ 
ox are included in this work. The habits of 
the animals are very fully recorded and are the 
more interesting because in most sections of 
the country the time has gone by when such 
things as are here set down can be seen. The wild 
buffalo no longer exists, and over much of the 
land the elk, once extending from ocean to 
ocean, has passed away, while the progress of 
settlement and cultivation over the West have 
swept off other large mammals from a great 
area of country which once swarmed with them. 
Mr. Seton’s work is as little scientific—in the 
commonly accepted and repellant sense—as it 
could well be. Scientific terminology and dry 
technical details have no place here. He sticks 
closely to his text—the living animals. The 
first species in the first volume—the wapiti 
—may serve as an illustration of the treat¬ 
ment of the various animals in the book. 
A full page plate showing a wapiti and two fe¬ 
males faces the first page, which opens with the 
names English, technical (Latin) French Cana¬ 
dian, and Indian; family, generic and specific 
characters follow, then size and measurements, 
a list of the sub-species or races now recog¬ 
nized, a history of the names, and finally the life 
history. The map which accompanies the ac¬ 
count shows the distribution of the wapiti in 
the year 1500 and the year 1900, and various 
geographical areas are marked with the names 
of the forms that have been or are found in 
them. The life history occupies something over 
twenty pages, of which two are devoted to draw¬ 
ings of antlers, and besides there is a plate show¬ 
ing a bull elk in characteristic attitude—ap¬ 
proaching to attack—and a maze of tracks in 
the snow. Under the life history is found an 
estimate of the numbers of the elk in ancient 
times, which “may have been 10,000,000 head.” 
How difficult to make such an estimate as this 
except as the merest guess, yet we know the 
numbers must have been enormous — greater 
even, we should suppose, than these stupendous 
figures. La Salle in 1679 crossing the water shed 
between Lake Erie and Lake Michigan speaks 
of the incredible number of bears, elk, deer and 
wild turkeys, which his party could keep away 
from them—presumably keep from running over 
them—only by shooting at them. The account of 
the elk closes with Bailey Grohman s impressive 
description of a moonlight battle between bulls. 
An account of a daylight battle in the British 
Columbia Mountains fatal to one of the com¬ 
batants was printed in Forest and Stream two 
or three years ago. 
To the outdoor man of experience—be he 
hunter or naturalist—these volumes are full of 
suggestion. It is almost impossible to read a 
page without a wish to comment on it, or to 
add some story or illustration to those which 
Mr. Seton gives. No detailed description can 
be given to the work here. It is of absorbing 
interest and one would like to sit down and 
annotate it were it not for the practical impos¬ 
sibility of putting into a work even so large as. 
this one all the material that is to be had. The 
account of the buffalo presents the peculiar at¬ 
tractions that anything about this species must 
always have, but we are sorry that Mr. Seton 
has followed a popular writer of Indian stories 
in calling the Cheyenne Roman Nose a chief, 
and in making him wear a white buffalo robe 
at the time of his death at Beecher’s Island in 
1868. To the Cheyennes as to many other plains 
tribes the white buffalo was sacred and could 
not be used for any purpose whatever. A 
Cheyenne woman might not dress it, but a priest 
might remove the skin, which with appropriate 
ceremonies was then offered to the principal 
god. Neither Roman Nose nor any other Chey¬ 
enne ever wore a white buffalo. On page 267 
Mr. Seton says that “the blizzard” has been en¬ 
tirely ignored as a destroyer of bison. Techni¬ 
cally this is perhaps true, yet years ago accounts 
were written about the destruction by storms— 
about 1845—of the buffalo that once frequented 
the Laramie plains to which they have never 
since returned. In the winter of 1855-1856 a 
similar destruction of buffalo and wild horses 
took place on the southern plains in what is 
now Colorado, Kansas and the Indian Territory. 
The interest in the Allard herd, from which 
spread the great herd of buffalo recently sold 
by Michel Pablo to the Canadian Government, 
might, we think, have justified the insertion of 
the narrative of how these first buffalo calves 
were taken over the mountains away back in 
the early ’70s. 
The accounts of the various species are given 
concisely and interestingly. The work is orderly 
in arrangement, and the side heads found on 
every page add to ease of reading and to quick 
finding of different subjects. It is by far the 
best book dealing with these species that has 
ever been published. It represents the careful 
painstaking work of many years and in its 1,300 
pages are brought together an astonishing num¬ 
ber of facts. The care with which they have been 
gathered and presented deserves high praise. As 
naturalists and hunters learn more and more 
