Part 2

A WALRUS BATTLE FRONT: THOUGH FORMIDABLE LOOKING, WITH THEIR LONG TUSKS, THEY ASK ONLY TO BE LET ALONE.]

ANTELOPES EVERYWHERE

“I have certain memories of travel on the plains, when for the whole long day one would pass a continual succession of small bands of antelope, numbering from ten to fifty or sixty, those at a little distance paying no attention to the traveler, while those nearer at hand loped lazily and unconcernedly out of the way. In the year 1879, in certain valleys in North Park, Colorado, I saw wonderful congregations of antelope. As far as we could see in any direction, all over the basins, there were antelope in small or considerable groups. In one of these places I examined with care the trails made by them, for this was the only place where I ever saw deeply worn antelope trails, which suggested the buffalo trails of the plains.”

The wealth of animal life found by our forebears was one of the great natural resources of the New World. Although freely drawn upon from the first, the stock was but little depleted up to within a century. During the last one hundred years, however, the rapidly increasing occupation of the continent and other causes, together with a steadily increasing commercial demand for animal products, have had an appalling effect. The buffalo, elk, and antelope are reduced to a pitiful fraction of their former countless numbers.

WANTON WASTE OF WILD LIFE

Practically all other large game has alarmingly decreased, and its extermination has been partly stayed only by the recent enforcement of protective laws. It is quite true that the presence of wild buffalo, for instance, in any region occupied for farming and stock-raising purposes is incompatible with such use. Thus the extermination of the bison as a denizen of our western plains was inevitable. The destruction, however, of these noble game animals by millions for their hides only furnishes a notable example of the wanton wastefulness which has heretofore largely characterized the handling of our wild life.

A like disregard for the future has been shown in the pursuit of the sea mammals. The whaling and sealing industries are very ancient, extending back for a thousand years or more; but the greatest and most ruthless destruction of the whales and seals has come within the last century, especially through the use of steamships and bomb-guns. Without adequate international protection, there is grave danger that the most valuable of these sea mammals will be exterminated. The fur seal and the sea-elephant, once so abundant on the coast of southern California, are nearly or quite gone, and the sea otter of the North Pacific is dangerously near extinction.

The recent great abundance of large land mammals in North America, both in individuals and species, is in striking contrast with their scarcity in South America, the difference evidently being due to the long isolation of the southern continent from other land-masses, whence it might have been restocked after the loss of a formerly existing fauna.

SPECIES COME AND SPECIES GO

The differences in the geographic distribution of mammal life between North and South America and the relationships between our fauna and that of the Old World are parts of the latest chapter of a wonderful story running back through geologic ages. The former chapters are recorded in the fossil beds of all the continents. While only a good beginning has been made in deciphering these records, enough has been done by the fascinating researches of Marsh, Cope, Osborn, Scott, and others to prove that in all parts of the earth one fauna has succeeded another in marvelous procession.

It has been shown also that these changes in animal life, accompanied by equal changes in plant life, have been largely brought about by variations in climate and by the uplifting and depressing of continental land-masses above or below the sea. The potency of climatic influence on animal life is so great that even a fauna of large mammals will be practically destroyed over a great area by a long-continued change of a comparatively few degrees (probably less than ten degrees Fahrenheit) in the mean daily temperatures.

The distribution of both recent and fossil mammals shows conclusively that numberless species have spread from their original homes across land bridges to remote unoccupied regions, where they have become isolated as the bridges disappeared beneath the waves of the sea.

VAST NATURAL MUSEUMS OF EXTINCT ANIMAL LIFE

For ages Asia appears to have served as a vast and fecund nursery for new mammals from which North Temperate and Arctic America have been supplied. The last and comparatively recent land bridge, across which came the ancestors of our moose, elk, caribou, prong-horned antelope, mountain goats, mountain sheep, musk-oxen, bears, and many other mammals, was in the far Northwest, where Bering Straits now form a shallow channel only 28 miles wide separating Siberia from Alaska.

The fossil beds of the Great Plains and other parts of the West contain eloquent proofs of the richness and variety of mammal life on this continent at different periods in the past. Perhaps the most wonderful of all these ancient faunas was that revealed by the bones of birds and mammals which had been trapped in the asphalt pits recently discovered in the outskirts of Los Angeles, California. These bones show that prior to the arrival of the present fauna the plains of southern California swarmed with an astonishing wealth of strange birds and beasts (see page 401).

The most notable of these are saber-toothed tigers, lions much larger than those of Africa; giant wolves; several kinds of bears, including the huge cave bears, even larger than the gigantic brown bears of Alaska; large wild horses; camels; bison (unlike our buffalo); tiny antelope, the size of a fox; mastodons, mammoths with tusks 15 feet long; and giant ground sloths; in addition to many other species, large and small.

With these amazing mammals were equally strange birds, including, among numerous birds of prey, a giant vulturelike species (far larger than any condor), peacocks, and many others.

DID MAN LIVE THEN?

The geologically recent existence of this now vanished fauna is evidenced by the presence in the asphalt pits of bones of the gray fox, the mountain lion, and close relatives of the bobcat and coyote, as well as the condor, which still frequent that region, and thus link the past with the present. The only traces of the ancient vegetation discovered in these asphalt pits are a pine and two species of juniper, which are members of the existing flora.

There is reason for believing that primitive man occupied California and other parts of the West during at least the latter part of the period when the fauna of the asphalt pits still flourished. Dr. C. Hart Merriam informs me that the folk-lore of the locally restricted California Indians contains detailed descriptions of a beast which is unmistakably a bison, probably the bison of the asphalt pits.

The discovery in these pits of the bones of a gigantic vulturelike bird of prey of far greater size than the condor is even more startling, since the folk-lore of the Eskimos and Indians of most of the tribes from Bering Straits to California and the Rocky Mountain region abound in tales of the “thunder-bird”--a gigantic bird of prey like a mighty eagle, capable of carrying away people in its talons. Two such coincidences suggest the possibility that the accounts of the bison and the “thunder-bird” are really based on the originals of the asphalt beds and have been passed down in legendary history through many thousands of years.

CAMELS AND HORSES ORIGINATED IN NORTH AMERICA

Among other marvels our fossil beds reveal the fact that both camels and horses originated in North America. The remains of many widely different species of both animals have been found in numerous localities extending from coast to coast in the United States. Camels and horses, with many species of antelope closely related to still existing forms in Africa, abounded over a large part of this country up to the end of the geological age immediately preceding the present era.

Then through imperfectly understood changes of environment a tremendous mortality among the wild life took place and destroyed practically all of the splendid large mammals, which, however, have left their records in the asphalt pits of California and other fossil beds throughout the country. This original fauna was followed by an influx of other species which made up the fauna when America was discovered.

At the time of its discovery by Columbus this continent had only one domesticated mammal--the dog. In most instances the ancestors of the Indian dogs appear to have been the native coyotes or gray wolves, but the descriptions of some dogs found by early explorers indicate very different and unknown ancestry. Unfortunately these strange dogs became extinct at an early period, and thus left unsolvable the riddle of their origin.

Before the discovery of America the people of the Old World had domesticated cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, goats, dogs, and cats; but none of these domestic animals, except the dog, existed in America until brought from Europe by the invaders of the New World.

The wonderful fauna of the asphalt pits had vanished long before America was first colonized by white men, and had been replaced by another mainly from the Old World, less varied in character, but enormously abundant in individuals. Although so many North American mammals were derived from Asia, some came from South America, while others, as the raccoons, originated here.

FEWER LARGE MAMMALS IN THE TROPICS

It is notable that the fossil beds which prove the existence of an extraordinary abundance of large mammals in North America at various periods in the past, as well as the enormous aggregation of mammalian life which occupied this continent, both on land and at sea, at the time of its discovery, were confined to the Temperate and Arctic Zones. It is popularly believed that the tropics possess an exuberance of life beyond that of other climes, yet in no tropic lands or seas, except in parts of Africa and southern Asia, has there been developed such an abundance of large mammal life as these northern latitudes have repeatedly known.

In temperate and arctic lands such numbers of large mammals could exist only where the vegetation not only sufficed for summer needs, but retained its nourishing qualities through the winter. In the sea the vast numbers of seals, sea-lions, walruses, and whales of many kinds could be maintained only by a limitless profusion of fishes and other marine life.

From the earliest appearance of mammals on the globe to comparatively recent times one mammalian fauna has succeeded another in the regular sequence of evolution, man appearing late on the scene and being subject to the same natural influences as his mammalian kindred. During the last few centuries, however, through the development of agriculture, the invention of new methods of transportation, and of modern firearms, so-called civilized man has spread over and now dominates most parts of the earth.

As a result, aboriginal man and the large mammals of continental areas have been, or are being, swept away and replaced by civilized man and his domestic animals. Orderly evolution of the marvelously varied mammal life in a state of nature is thus being brought to an abrupt end. Henceforth fossil beds containing deposits of mammals caught in sink-holes, and formed by river and other floods in subarctic, temperate, and tropical parts of the earth, will contain more and more exclusively the bones of man and his domesticated horses, cattle, and sheep.

DESTROYING THE IRRESTORABLE

The splendid mammals which possessed the earth until man interfered were the ultimate product of Nature working through the ages that have elapsed since the dawn of life. All of them show myriads of exquisite adaptations to their environment in color, form, organs, and habits. The wanton destruction of any of these species thus deprives the world of a marvelous organism which no human power can ever restore.

Fortunately, although it is too late to save many notable animals, the leading nations of the world are rapidly awakening to a proper appreciation of the value and significance of wild life. As a consequence, while the superb herds of game on the limitless plains will vanish, sportsmen and nature lovers, aided by those who appreciate the practical value of wild life as an asset, may work successfully to provide that the wild places shall not be left wholly untenanted.

Although Americans have been notably wasteful of wild life, even to the extermination of numerous species of birds and mammals, yet they are now leading the world in efforts to conserve what is left of the original fauna. No civilized people, with the exception of the South African Boers, have been such a nation of hunters as those of the United States. Most hunters have a keen appreciation of nature, and American sportsmen as a class have become ardent supporters of a nation-wide movement for the conservation of wild life.

SAVING OUR WILD LIFE

Several strong national organizations are doing great service in forwarding the conservation of wild life, as the National Geographic Society, the National Association of Audubon Societies, American Bison Society, Boone and Crockett Club, New York Zoölogical Society, American Game Protective and Propagation Association, Permanent Wild Life Protective Fund, and others. In addition, a large number of unofficial State organizations have been formed to assist in this work.

Through the authorization by Congress, the Federal Government is actively engaged in efforts for the protection and increase of our native birds and mammals. This work is done mainly through the Bureau of Biological Survey of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, which is in charge of the several Federal large-game preserves and nearly seventy bird reservations.

On the large-game preserves are herds of buffalo, elk, deer, and antelope. The Yellowstone National Park, under the Department of the Interior, is one of the most wonderfully stocked game preserves in the world. In this beautiful tract of forest, lakes, rivers, and mountains live many moose, elk, deer, antelope, mountain sheep, black and grizzly bears, wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and lynxes.

Practically all of the States have game and fish commissions in one form or another, with a warden service for the protection of game, and large numbers of State game preserves have been established. The increasing occupation of the country, the opening up of wild places, and the destruction of forests are rapidly restricting available haunts for game. This renders particularly opportune the present and increasing wide-spread interest in the welfare of the habitants of the wilderness.

The national forests offer an unrivaled opportunity for the protection and increase of game along broad and effective lines. At present the title to game mammals is vested in the States, among which great differences in protective laws and their administration in many cases jeopardize the future game supply.

If a coöperative working arrangement could be effected between the States and the Department of Agriculture, whereby the Department would have supervision and control over the game on the national forests, so far as concerns its protection and the designation of hunting areas, varying the quantity of game to be taken from definite areas in accordance with its abundance from season to season, while the States would control open seasons for shooting, the issuance of hunting licenses, and similar local matters, the future welfare of large game in the Western States would be assured.

Under such an arrangement the game supply would be handled on business principles. When game becomes scarce in any restricted area, hunting could be suspended until the supply becomes renewed, while increased hunting could be allowed in areas where there is sufficient game to warrant it. In brief, big game could be handled by the common-sense methods now used so effectively in the stock industry on the open range. At present the lack of a definite general policy to safeguard our game supply and the resulting danger to our splendid native animals are deplorably in evidence.

=OPOSSUM, VIRGINIA OPOSSUM= (=Didelphis virginiana= and its subspecies)

The opossums are the American representatives of the ancient order of Marsupials--a wonderfully varied group of mammals now limited to America and Australasia. Throughout the order the young are born in an embryonic condition and are transferred to teats located in an external pocket or pouch in the skin of the abdomen, where they complete their development. The kangaroos are among the most striking members of this group.

Numerous species of opossums are known, all peculiar to America and distributed from the eastern United States to Patagonia. The Virginia opossum, the largest of all the species, is characterized by its coarse hair, piglike snout, naked ears, and long, hairless, prehensile tail. Its toes are long, slender, and so widely spread that its footprints on the muddy border of a stream or in a dusty trail show every toe distinctly, as in a bird track, and are unmistakably different from those of any other mammal.

This is the only species of opossum occurring in the United States, where it occupies all the wooded eastern parts from eastern New York, southern Wisconsin, and eastern Nebraska south to the Gulf coast and into the tropics. It has recently been introduced in central California. Although scarce in the northern parts of its range, it is abundant and well known in the warmer Southern States.

These animals love the vicinity of water, and are most numerous in and about swamps or other wet lowlands and along bottom-lands bordering streams. They have their dens in hollow trees, in holes under the roots of trees, or in similar openings where they may hide away by day. Their food consists of almost everything, animal or vegetable, that is edible, including chickens, which they capture in nocturnal raids.