EXTINCT ANIMALS. Many animals which inhabited the earth in bygone periods have entirely disappeared, leaving not even a modern representative of their race. Others, no doubt, were lcnown to prehistoric peoples, con cerning which no record has come down to us. But within the period of recorded observations, many animals have lived and died out; various causes contributing to their extermination, not least among these being the presence of man lcind. Man reconstructs the face of the earth to suit his needs: he cuts down forests, plows or burns over prairie lands, changes the course of rivers, drains. the swamps and thus destroys the natural environment of many of nature's wild children. Then, too, he destroys crea tures directly; he lcills them for food, for clothing or for other utilitarian purposes; he hunts them because he fears them, as dangerous foes to himself or to his agricultural pursuits; he destroys them for his sport; and, finally, he draws them from feral conditions by domestica tion. Not only thus does man directly injure the wild creatures, but his coming, accompanied by exterminating influences, kills out certain other creatures. These, when man has destroyed their natural prey, practically die of starvation before they can adapt themselves to changed conditions. Then the domestic dogs, cats, etc., help on the work of slaughter in certain ways, by preying upon wild life.
That prehistoric man was partially respon sible for the extinction of certain animals, scientists are agreed; but they are also assured that except in the cases of the horse, the camel, and perhaps the domestic dog, the extinction was due more to their inability to adapt them selves readily to the changes of climate of that remote time than to human agency. The wild progenitors of the horse and camel have not been known in historic times. That aboriginal man in Europe aided the elemental forces in their work of destruction, by hunting to death the mastodon and the great cave-hunting lions, bears and hyenas, and other huge creatures of his time, is most probable; but in America this is not at all likely to have been the case.
Since .the earliest records were made, how ever, various species have been eliminated from the European fauna; many from that of the other continents as well. In the days when the Romans fought. the Dacians, various members of the cat family were common along the Rhine Danube f rontier, among them, lions, tigers, leopards and wild-cats. They found also the great herds of wild cattle, which have entirely vanished. The ibex, too, is gone, and, but for the protective legislation, the chamois and the deer would have been exterminated as well. The bear, the beaver, the wolf and the wild boar have all gone within the last 10 centuries, from Britain, the wild-boar, which was hunted by royal cavalcades, disappearing at the close of the 17th century.
Records concerning Asiatic animals show few cases of extinction except those of a few cases of a species of sea-cow native to the Commander Islands, off the Kamchatkan coast. This animal, the rhytina, was pursued for its flesh, chiefly, and, so far as is known, the last survivor was killed in 1768. Among the same islands lived the now extinct Pallas's cormorant, a great bird also exterminated because of its edible quality.
Animals which are restricted in habitat to small islands seem liable to suffer from the in roads of man, more surely and swiftly, because they have no adequate means of escape, many such examples being furnished of birds whose power of flight is limited. Such species, espe cially in the Australasian and South Sea islands, have been in almost all cases destroyed; not ably several representatives of the moa tribe in New Zealand, the dodo, the solitaire and certain parrots, rails and fowls. The disappearance of the gigantic edible tortoises from the islands of the Indian Ocean and from the Galapagos presents another striking instance of the ex termination of animals owing to man's dep redations.