Wild Animals of North America / Intimate Studies of Big and Little Creatures of the Mammal Kingdom

by Edward William Nelson

FUR SEAL: FEMALES AND YOUNG PUPS

From the ages of one to four years fur seals are extremely playful. They are marvelous swimmers, and frolic about in pursuit of one another, now diving deep, and then, one after the other, suddenly leaping high above the surface in graceful curves, like porpoises.

Many of the chroniclers dealing with explorations and life on the frontier during the early period of the occupation of America gave interesting details concerning the game animals. Allouez says that in 1680, between Lake Erie and Lake Michigan the prairies were filled with an incredible number of bears, wapiti, white-tailed deer, and turkeys, on which the wolves made fierce war. He adds that on a number of occasions this game was so little wild that it was necessary to fire shots to protect the party from it. Perrot states that during the winter of 1670-1671, 2,400 moose were snared on the Great Manitoulin Island, at the head of Lake Huron. Other travelers, even down to the last century, give similar accounts of the abundance of game.

© Keystone View Co.

ROAMING “MONARCHS OF THE PLAIN”: BRITISH COLUMBIA

A remnant of the veritable sea of wild life that surged over American soil before the dikes of civilization compassed it about and all but wiped it out.

TRAINS HELD UP BY BUFFALO

The original buffalo herds have been estimated to have contained from 30,000,000 to 60,000,000 animals, and in 1870 it was estimated that about 5,500,000 still survived. A number of men now living were privileged to see some of the great herds of the West before they were finally destroyed. Dr. George Bird Grinnell writes:

“In 1870, I happened to be on a train that was stopped for three hours to let a herd of buffalo pass. We supposed they would soon pass by, but they kept coming. On a number of occasions in earlier days the engineers thought that they could run through the herds, and that, seeing the locomotive, the buffalo would stop or turn aside; but after a few locomotives had been ditched by the animals the engineers got in the way of respecting the buffaloes’ idiosyncrasies....