EXTERMINATION OF ANIMALS BY PREHISTORIC MEN. Just how far we are to attribute to the direct agency of primitive man the extinction of forms that evidently survived until after his advent upon the earth must he a matter largely of opinion. There seems good reason to suppose that the last of various species of moa-like birds were destroyed by the primitive inhabitants of New Zealand and 1\ladagascar; hut there is a fair possibility that the cold of the Glacial Period is wholly responsible for the end of a group that no doubt was waning. The same remarks apply to the mammoth and mastodon. That man was contemporary with the last of the mam moths in southern Europe seems indubitable; that the American mastodon was ever seen alive by human eyes is, on the other hand, very doubt ful. At any rate, the termination of their career over the vast areas of the northern half of our hemisphere cannot be attributed to human hands. Paleolithic man probably hunted not only the mammoth, but several other animals whose early extinction may have been hastened in southern Europe. such as the huge sabre-toothed tigers (Maclerodus), the ancient grizzly and brown bear, the larger varieties of the lion and spotted and striped hyenas, the woolly rhinoceros (Rhi noceros tirhorinus) and related species, and various smaller animals long extinct. Some of these were northern, like the musk-ox, reindeer, Arctic fox, etc.; others southern. like the African elephant and hippopotamus. In the changes of climate which aeoompanied and followed the Glacial Period these and other species from southern Europe. to survive. if at all, only
in the north or in Africa, as their adaptations required. Certain species we know or may feel sure survived until destroyed by mankind. Such was the ...rise with tlw great-horned Irish deer (see DEER; ELK), which assuredly survived un til the close of the `Bronze Age.' The two most interesting instances of prehistorie extermina tion, however, are those of the horse and the camel. The wild stock of neither of these has been certainly known within historic times. Tlow long it 111:ly 11;1%1' survived in Asia or northern Africa we have no present means of knowing; still less 1 If answering the question whether any indigenous horse was eontemporary with early man in South America. Much evidence exists, however, of the presence of native horses in Europe well on into the Neolithic period of human settlement there. They were hunted and killed mainly for food, no doubt, but seem to some extent to have been domesticated. Just how long they lasted is uncertain. but it seems indubitable that man is responsible for their ultimate extinction. Whether, at some earlier period, a separate species of dog, the founder of the races of domestic dogs, ever existed, or if so was exterminated after partial domestication by man, is purely conjectural. (See Don.) The saiga was killed off in southwestern Europe pre historically, but has survived eastward.