[66] The most zealous and successful New England hunter of whom I have any personal knowledge, and who continued to indulge his favorite passion much beyond the age which generally terminates exploits in woodcraft, lamented on his deathbed that he had not lived long enough to carry up the record of his slaughtered deer to the number of one thousand, which he had fixed as the limit of his ambition. He was able to handle the rifle, for sixty years, at a period when the game was still nearly as abundant as ever, but had killed only nine hundred and sixty of these quadrupeds, of all species. The exploits of this Nimrod have been far exceeded by prairie hunters, but I doubt whether, in the originally wooded territory of the Union, any single marksman has brought down a larger number.
[67] Erdkunde, viii. Asien, 1ste Abtheilung, pp. 660, 758.
[68] See chapter iii, post; also Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, i, p. 71. From the anatomical character of the bones of the urus, or auerochs, found among the relics of the lacustrine population of ancient Switzerland, and from other circumstances, it is inferred that this animal had been domesticated by that people; and it is stated, I know not upon what authority, in Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia, that it had been tamed by the Veneti also. See Lyell, Antiquity of Man, pp. 24, 25, and the last-named work, p. 489. This is a fact of much interest, because it is, I believe, the only known instance of the extinction of a domestic quadruped, and the extreme improbability of such an event gives some countenance to the theory of the identity of the domestic ox with, and its descent from, the urus.
[69] In maintaining the recent existence of the lion in the countries named in the text, naturalists have, perhaps, laid too much weight on the frequent occurrence of representations of this animal in sculptures apparently of a historical character. It will not do to argue, twenty centuries hence, that the lion and the unicorn were common in Great Britain in Queen Victoria's time, because they are often seen "fighting for the crown" in the carvings and paintings of that period.
Dar nach sloger schiere, einen wisent bat elch.
Starcher bore biere. but einen grimmen schelch.
XVI Auentiure.
The testimony of the Nibelungen-Lied is not conclusive evidence that these quadrupeds existed in Germany at the time of the composition of that poem. It proves too much; for, a few lines above those just quoted, Sigfrid is said to have killed a lion, an animal which the most patriotic Teuton will hardly claim as a denizen of mediæval Germany.
[71] The wild turkey takes readily to the water, and is able to cross rivers of very considerable width by swimming. By way of giving me an idea of the former abundance of this bird, an old and highly respectable gentleman who was among the early white settlers of the West, told me that he once counted, in walking down the northern bank of the Ohio River, within a distance of four miles, eighty-four turkeys as they landed singly, or at most in pairs, after swimming over from the Kentucky side.
[72] The wood pigeon has been observed to increase in numbers in Europe also, when pains have been taken to exterminate the hawk. The pigeons, which migrated in flocks so numerous that they were whole days in passing a given point, were no doubt injurious to the grain, but probably less so than is generally supposed; for they did not confine themselves exclusively to the harvests for their nourishment.
[73] Pigeons were shot near Albany, in New York, a few years ago, with green rice in their crops, which it was thought must have been growing, a very few hours before, at the distance of seven or eight hundred miles.