The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1881-12-03
Influence of Man on Animals.

| 1t is quite obvious tnaG the lnnuen&e
bf man has been generally inimical to
the LARGER beasts and birds. The edi.
hle species he has killed off for food:
the earniyores he has killed off as COM.
netitors and enemies of his own. In
Britain alone we have destroyed or
driven away the urus, the reindeer, the
hear the wolf, the beaver and the
wild boar; while we have almost exter-
minated the bustard, the seal and the
white cattle of Chillingham, and have
lately reintroduced by artificial means
the long locally extinct capercailzie.
The red deer survives only by careful
preservation; the fallow deer is doubt
| fully indigenous; the pheasant is an ac-.
climatized alien. So, in New-Zealand,
the Maories had destroyed the moa be-
| fore white men reached the island; in
Mauritius the dodo only just lived on
long enough to be inaccurately de-
scribed; in Behring Strait the peculiar
marine mammal allied to the manatee
was killed off by the earliest European
explorers. The walrus and the seal
even now threaten to become extinct;
the European seas are getting fished
out; the bison and the peccary will soon
be driven out of America; the wapita
is even now becoming scarcer every
year. In short, man is and has always
been exterminating all the larger ami
mails everywhere, and we may even
question how considerable part he
may have borne in the destruction of
some among the great extinct creatures
of the quatenary period. He has al
most certainly killed off the reindeer in
its wild form, and he may have as
sisted the glacial epoch in killing off
the mammoth, the cave bear, and the
woolly rhinoceros. Wherever man APP
pears, the large beasts and birds begin
to disappear. 1t is only against small
creatures that he is helpless, in exact
proportion to their smallness He can
do little against the sugar cane rat or
the ordinary mouse; still less against
the army-worm or the seventeen-year
locust, and almost nothing, it would
seem against the phylloxera or the Col
orado beetle. And when he comes to
deal with the microscopic organisms
which invade his very veins as Yellow
Jack or typhoid fever, il appears that
his best chance lies in actually intro
ducing small colony Of the enemy in
attenuated and comparatively innocuous
forms into his own system. On the
other hand, it does not Pillow that uni
versal civilization or the general estab-
lishment of the highest existing type OF
man over the whole world will neces-
sarily lead to the total extinction of all
the larger birds and mammals. There
can be little doubt that many must 90
the lions, tigers, pumas and jaguars,
which indeed are already disappearing;
the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, the
bison and perhaps even the whale,
which are not likely to be artifcially
preserved. But many have been and
will be spared, because here again the
action of man differs widely from that
of the lower animals. Alone among
carnivorous creatures, he has intelli-
gence enough to preserve some OF each
useful kind for breeding; not quite
alone among herblvorous and frugivor-
GUS species, he keeps little of each edi-
BILE plant for seed. 1t seems probable
that certain highly specialized early
types, such as the sabre toothed lions,
have become extinct through the too
absolute perfection of their carnivorous
structure. They were peculiarly
adapted for killing the large mammals
of their own period; and when they had
succeeded in killing off the whole race,
they died out themselves for want of
food, because they were too specialized
In their enormous sabre-like teeth and
heavy heads to compete with other
and lighter types of cats such as the
ordinary lions and tigers, in the pursuit
of smaller prey like deer and antelopes.
But when man has once reached the
pastoral stage, he does not eat up all
the animals which he can get; he do.
mesticates some of them, and only kills
those superfuous ones which he does
not need for breeding purposes. 1t is
this stage which really marks the diff
ference between what we call natural
and artificial selection. Man, the
hunter, scarcely differs much from other
animals in his influence upon the gen.
eral fauna, except in so far as he picks
off the very best and largest of each
kind; with pastoral and agricultural
man we rise to new level, where the
useful kinds are definitely and con.
sciously selected and favored, instead
of being ruthlessly destroyed. Hence.
forth animals and plants survive, NOT
because they are inedible, but because
they are edible. Pail Mall Gazette.