Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/432

EXTINCT ANIMALS. sometimes to the extinction of their species, by man's clearing of the forests, draining of marshes, burning over areas by prairie and forest fires, damming or divergence of rivers, fencing in and cultivation of the ground, thus destroying pasturage and other food, limiting movement, and in many ways interfering with animal methods and means of obtaining a livelihood. Another potent influence is man's turning loose upon wild life new enemies in the shape of his domestic dogs, cats, rats, goats, or hogs, or of introduced exotic animals, all of which, intentionally or otherwise, are injurious to some or many wild creatures, and in some instances have been the principal agent in the extermination of lost forms. Many minor circumstances have contributed to the depletion or disappearance of animals in all the more civilized parts of the earth; and it must be remembered that the extinction of any species has a distinct effect upon some or many others. Thus the removal of the herbivorous quadrupeds from a region would result in death by starvation of all the larger carnivores of that region.

. Just how far we are to attribute to the direct agency of primitive man the extinction of forms that evidently survived until after his advent upon the earth must be a matter largely of opinion. There seems good reason to suppose that the last of various species of moa-like birds were destroyed by the primitive inhabitants of New Zealand and Madagascar; but there is a fair possibility that the cold of the Glacial Period is wholly responsible for the end of a group that no doubt was waning. The same remarks apply to the mammoth and mastodon. That man was contemporary with the last of the mammoths in southern Europe seems indubitable: that the American mastodon was ever seen alive by human eyes is, on the other hand, very doubtful. At any rate, the termination of their career over the vast areas of the northern half of our hemisphere cannot be attributed to human hands. Paleolithic man probably hunted not only the mammoth, but several other animals whose early extinction may have been hastened in southern Europe, such as the huge sabre-toothed tigers (Machærodus), the ancient grizzly and brown bear, the larger varieties of the lion and spotted and striped hyenas, the woolly rhinoceros Rhinoceros tichorinus) and related species, and various smaller animals long extinct. Some of these were northern, like the musk-ox, reindeer, Arctic fox, etc.; others southern, like the African elephant and hippopotamus. In the changes of climate which accompanied and followed the Glacial Period these and other species disappeared from southern Europe, to survive, if at all, only in the north or in Africa, as their adaptations required. Certain species we know or may feel sure survived until destroyed by mankind. Such was the case with the great-horned Irish deer (see ; ), which assuredly survived until the close of the ‘Bronze Age.’ The two most interesting instances of prehistoric extermination, however, are those of the horse and the camel. The wild stock of neither of these has been certainly known within historic times. How long it may have survived in Asia or northern Africa we have no present means of knowing; still less of answering the question whether any indigenous horse was contemporary with early man in South America. Much evidence exists,

however, of the presence of native horses in Europe well on into the Neolithic period of human settlement there. They were hunted and killed mainly for food, no doubt, but seem to some extent to have been domesticated. Just how long they lasted is uncertain, but it seems indubitable that man is responsible for their ultimate extinction. Whether, at some earlier period, a separate species of dog, the founder of the races of domestic dogs, ever existed, or if so was exterminated after partial domestication by man, is purely conjectural. (See .) The saiga was killed off in southwestern Europe prehistorically, but has survived eastward.

. Since written records began, several species have vanished from the fauna of Europe, but remain elsewhere, or are preserved in carefully guarded remnants. The lion, tiger, leopard, and various wildcats once inhabited the valley of the Danube, and the lion was common there in Roman times. When the Romans first penetrated central and western Europe they found numerous not only the ‘bonasus,’ which we now mistakenly call the aurochs, but a race of great wild cattle. Mere remnants of these (see ; ) remain in a more or less impure condition on private preserves. The native and  (qq.v.) would long ago have perished had they not been protected and bred in parks and hunting forests. The chamois of the Alps survives only under legal protection, which has not sufficed to keep the ibex, now utterly extinct. The same might be said of certain lesser animals. Brown bears existed in Scotland up to the time of Edward the Confessor, but not later, and the last reindeer disappeared from Caithness about the same time. The beaver probably remained in Scotland and Wales until the thirteenth century. Wild boars were hunted until the end of the seventeenth century, and the wolf eluded his doom much longer, the last one being killed in England during the reign of Henry VIII., in Scotland in 1740, and in Ireland in 1775.

Asia furnishes few or no examples of animal extinction of importance since written records began, with the exception of the rhytina and a cormorant, both of which once dwelt on islands off the coast of Kamchatka. The rhytina was a sea-cow, closely related to the (q.v.), but much larger, which was confined to the Commander Islands in Bering Sea, where it was discovered by the expedition of Bering, which was wrecked there in 1741. During the next twenty years these islands were constantly visited by seal and fur hunters, who slaughtered the animals to obtain their beef-like flesh. It has been estimated by Stejneger (American Naturalist, vol. xxii., Philadelphia, 1887), who made local investigations, that not more than 3000 rhytinas herded there altogether, and the last one was killed about 1768. In the same island group, and nowhere else, there dwelt a very large but small-winged (q.v.) called Pallas's, after the Russian naturalist, its first describer. It was stupid and slow in its movements, furnished excellent flesh, and although a few survived the occasional visits of hungry sea hunters until 1839, at least, the end then came.

. The examples just recounted illustrate many cases in which inhabitants of small islands have