Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/346

332 completed on the surface of the globe, few animals have disappeared. Only some great species have become extinct, and man alone is the author of that extinction, so much to be regretted. It has been supposed that species, like individuals, were doomed to perish. It might be difficult to form any other conclusion, were we to consider the relics of those beings that have lived in the different geological periods; but if we examine the world as it exists we are forced to reject that belief, except on the supposition that new disturbances will hereafter occur on our globe.

While Central Europe, almost completely given up to Nature, was covered with vast forests and its inhabitants were thinly scattered, animals found few obstacles to their increase. The great species, quite rare in our time, were common in very many localities. Wild-oxen, aurochs, moose, and stags, roved in great herds, having nothing to fear but carnivora, especially bears and wolves. Men increasing in numbers changed the condition of the region; the animals were driven closer, and several of the more remarkable species, being easy to reach and attack, soon disappeared. The blind cupidity and love of destruction that possess uncivilized races have caused the loss of animals that might have been useful and valuable to man.

In spite of all this, the number of mammals entirely destroyed since the last important changes that have occurred in the climates of Europe is inconsiderable. It is now proved that man was already in existence during the epoch in which elephants clothed with a thick fleece, the rhinoceros, the cave bear and hyena, lived in our countries, and the reindeer was scattered over the land in abundance. Thousands of bones, collected side by side with wrought articles, have given incontestable proofs of this; but the disappearance of elephants and that of several other species must be attributed chiefly to natural causes, and with those we have no concern at present, even when speaking of a partial destruction. In fact, various animals, extinct in some parts of the world, under the influence of atmospheric conditions, have maintained an existence in regions subjected to a climate adapted to them. The reindeer, which was distributed through an immense geographical range in the glacial period, is the most striking instance of this.

A very large mammal, whose existence is not preserved by any tradition, must nevertheless have been among those exterminated by man; that is, the great-horned stag, also called the Irish fossil elk, an animal of the size of the ordinary elk, with the general form of the stag, and enormous horns attaining a spread of more than nine feet. Relics of this magnificent elk have been found in the boggy lands of France, England, Italy, Germany, and Poland. But the remains of this superb animal are chiefly found in Ireland, under those peat-beds which, in all probability, were formed at no very remote period.