Norwich bulletin., 1917-01-18

l been ditched by the animals the en- gineers got in the way of respecting the buffaloes idiosyncracies.'
 Astonishing as was the number of buffalo which roamed the plains of
 old, even more numerous were the an- telope, though the latter did not attract as much attention as the larger man. nlals. Besides these, the chroniclers Of the colonial days give many inter esting accounts Of the incredible number of other wild animals, includ- ing bears, wapiti, white-tailed deer,
 and turkeys, on which the wolves
 made fierce war. One writer narrates that during the winter of 1670-71 fully 2,400 moose were shared on the Great
 Manitoulin sland, at the head of Lake
 Huron.
 '"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 100 years, however. the rapidly in creasing occupation of the continent and other causes, together with a
 steady increasing commercial demand
 for animal products, have had an sp-
 palling effect. The buffalo, elk, and
 antelope are reduced to a pitiful frac-
 ton of their former countless numbers.
 Practically all other large game has
 alarmingly decreased and it's exter-
 imitation has been partly stayed only
 by the recent enforcement of protec-
 tive laws.
 'HThe 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 evident ly 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.
 s..- of North America and other parts of the West contain eloquent proofs of the richness and variety of mammal life OF this continent at different per iods in the past. tPerhaps the most wonderful of all these ancient faunas was that revealed by the bones of birds and mammals which had been trapped in the aShalt pits recently dis covered in the outskirts of Los Ange- les, 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. The most notable of these are Saber-toothed tigers, lions much larger than those of Africa; giant wolves; several kinds aofl bears including the huge cave Tbearss even larger than the gigantic brown bears of Alaska; large wild horses; canels. Gbison (unlilSe our lbuffaIo) ;l tiny antelope, the size of a5fox; masto-l donS, ImammothS with EtuSlzs i15 feet bong; and giant ground SlOtfS; in aC-l dition to many other species, large and small. II
 with these amazing mammals were equally strange bir91s including among numerous birds of prey a giant 'Vdf-Sl sture like species (far larger than any condor), peacoclzs, and many others.
 eThere 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 fiourished. The folklore of the 1o-s cally restricted California Indians contains detailed descriptions of a beast which is unmistakably bison, probably the bison of the asphalt pits.
 The discovery in these pits of the bones of a gigantic valture-lik bird of prey of far greater size than Ttfe condor is even more startling, since the folklore of the Eskimos and In- | dians of most of the tribes from Ber- l ing Straits to California and the Rocky | Mountain region abound in tales of the | 'thunder-b -birds'-a gigantic bird of | prey like a mighty eagle, capable of | away people in it's Ftalons | Two such coincidences suggest the possibility that the accounts of the bf- | son and the thunder bird are really | based on the originals of the asphalt | beds and have been passed down in | legendary history through many thou sands of years
 Among other marvels our fossil