on Steen Mountain, in the southeastern part of the State, where they
were common a few years ago. Mr. Vernon Bailey, of the Biological
Survey, has seen them also in the Wallowa Mountains. The Biological
Survey also has records of their occurrence in the Blue Mountains, where
they used to be found both on Strawberry Butte and on what are called
the Greenhorn Mountains. The last positive record from that region is in
1895. In 1897 Mr. Vernon Bailey reported sheep from Silver and Abert
Lakes in the desert region east of the Cascade. They were formerly
numerous in the rocky regions about Silver Lake, and a few still
inhabited the ridges northeast of Abert Lake.
In Nevada Mr. Bailey found sheep in the Toyabe range.
Mr. Bailey found sheep in the Seven Devils Mountains, and he and
Dr. Merriam found them in the Salmon River, Pahsimeroi and Sawtooth
Mountains, all in Idaho. Mr. Bailey also found them in Texas in the
Guadaloupe Mountains and in most of the ranges thence south to the
boundary line in western Texas.
* * * * *
From what has already been said it will be seen that in inaccessible
places all over the western country, from the Arctic Ocean south to
Mexico, and at one or two points in the great plains, there still remain
stocks of mountain sheep. Once the most unsuspicious and gentle of all
our large game animals, they have become very shy, wary, and well able
to take care of themselves. In the Yellowstone Park, on the other hand,
they have reverted to their old time tameness, and no longer regard man
with fear. There, as is told on other pages of this volume, they are
more tame than the equally protected antelope, mule deer or elk.
Should the Grand Canyon of the Colorado be set aside as a national park,
as it may be hoped it will be, the sheep found there will no doubt
increase, and become, as they now are in the Yellowstone Park, a most
interesting natural feature of the landscape. And in like manner, when
game refuges shall be established in the various forest reservations all
over the western country, this superb species will increase and do
well. Alert, quick-witted, strong, fleet and active, it is one of the
most beautiful and most imposing of North American animals. Equally at
home on the frozen snowbanks of the mountain top, or in the parched
deserts of the south, dwelling alike among the rocks, in the timber, or
on the prairie, the mountain sheep shows himself adaptable to all
conditions, and should surely have the best protection that we can give
him.
I shall never forget a scene witnessed many years ago, long before
railroads penetrated the Northwest. I was floating down the Missouri
River in a mackinaw boat, the sun just topping the high bad land bluffs
to the east, when a splendid ram stepped out, upon a point far above the
water, and stood there outlined against the sky. Motionless, with head
thrown back, and in an attitude of attention, he calmly inspected the
vessel floating along below him; so beautiful an object amid his wild
surroundings, and with his background of brilliant sky, that no hand was
stretched out for the rifle, but the boat floated quietly on past him,
and out of sight.
_George Bird Grinnell_.
[Illustration: _Merycodus osborni_ MATTHEW.
From the Middle Miocene of Colorado. Discovered and described by
Dr. W. D. Matthew. Mounted by Mr. Adam Hermann. Height at withers, 19
inches. Length of antlers, 9 inches.]
Preservation of the Wild Animals of North America[8]
[Footnote 8: Address before the Boone and Crockett Club, Washington,
January 23, 1904.]
The National and Congressional movement for the preservation of the
Sequoia in California represents a growth of intelligent sentiment. It
is the same kind of sentiment which must he aroused, and aroused in
time, to bring about Government legislation if we are to preserve our
native animals. That which principally appeals to us in the Sequoia is
its antiquity as a race, and the fact that California is its last
refuge.
As a special and perhaps somewhat novel argument for preservation, I
wish to remind you of the great antiquity of our game animals, and the
enormous period of time which it has taken nature to produce them. We
must have legislation, and we must have it in time. I recall the story
of the judge and jury who arrived in town and inquired about the
security of the prisoner, who was known to be a desperate character;
they were assured by the crowd that the prisoner was perfectly secure
because he was safely hanging to a neighboring tree. If our preservative
measures are not prompt, there will be no animals to legislate for.
SENTIMENT AND SCIENCE.
The sentiment which promises to save the Sequoia is due to the spread of
knowledge regarding this wonderful tree, largely through the efforts of
the Division of Forestry. In the official chronology of the United
States Geological Survey--which is no more nor less reliable than that
of other geological surveys, because all are alike mere approximations
to the truth--the Sequoia was a well developed race 10,000,000 of years
ago. It became one of a large family, including fourteen genera. The
master genus--the _Sequoia_--alone includes thirty extinct
species. It was distributed in past times through Canada, Alaska,
Greenland, British Columbia, across Siberia, and down into southern
Europe. The Ice Age, and perhaps competition with other trees more
successful in seeding down, are responsible for the fact that there are
now only two living species--the "red wood," or _Sequoia
sempervirens_, and the giant, or _Sequoia gigantea_. The last
refuge of the _gigantea_ is in ten isolated groves, in some of
which the tree is reproducing itself, while in others it has ceased to
reproduce.
In the year 1900 forty mills and logging companies were engaged in
destroying these trees.
All of us regard the destruction of the Parthenon by the Turks as a
great calamity; yet it would be possible, thanks to the laborious
studies which have chiefly emanated from Germany, for modern architects
to completely restore the Parthenon in its former grandeur; but it is
far beyond the power of all the naturalists of the world to restore one
of these Sequoias, which were large trees, over 100 feet in height,
spreading their leaves to the sun, before the Parthenon was even
conceived by the architects and sculptors of Greece.
LIFE OF THE SEQUOIA AND HISTORY OF THOUGHT.
In 1900 five hundred of the very large trees still remained, the highest
reaching from 320 to 325 feet. Their height, however, appeals to us less
than their extraordinary age, estimated by Hutchins at 3,600, or by John
Muir, who probably loves them more than any man living, at from 4,000 to
5,000 years. According to the actual count of Muir of 4,000 rings, by a
method which he has described to me, one of these trees was 1,000 years
old when Homer wrote the Iliad; 1,500 years of age when Aristotle was
foreshadowing his evolution theory and writing his history of animals;
2,000 years of age when Christ walked upon the earth; nearly 4,000 years
of age when the "Origin of Species" was written. Thus the life of one of
these trees spanned the whole period before the birth of Aristotle (384
B.C.) and after the death of Darwin (A.D. 1882), the two greatest
natural philosophers who have lived.
These trees are the noblest living things upon earth. I can imagine that
the American people are approaching a stage of general intelligence and
enlightened love of nature in which they will look back upon the
destruction of the Sequoia as a blot on the national escutcheon.
VENERATION OF AGE.
The veneration of age sentiment which should, and I believe actually
does, appeal to the American people when clearly presented to them even
more strongly than the commercial sentiment, is roused in equal strength
by an intelligent appreciation of the race longevity of the larger
animals which our ancestors found here in profusion, and of which but a
comparatively small number still survive. To the unthinking man a bison,
a wapiti, a deer, a pronghorn antelope, is a matter of hide and meat; to
the real nature lover, the true sportsman, the scientific student, each
of these types is a subject of intense admiration. From the mechanical
standpoint they represent an architecture more elaborate than that of
Westminster Abbey, and a history beside which human history is as of
yesterday.
SLOW EVOLUTION OF MODERN MAMMALS.
These animals were not made in a day, nor in a thousand years, nor in a
million years. As said the first Greek philosopher, Empedocles, who 560
B.C. adumbrated the "survival of the fittest" theory of Darwin, they are
the result of ceaseless trials of nature. While the Sequoia was first
emerging from the Carboniferous, or Coal Period, the reptile-like
ancestors of these mammals, covered with scales and of egg-laying
habits, were crawling about and giving not the most remote prophecy of
their potential transformation through 10,000,000 of years into the
superb fauna of the northern hemisphere.
The descendants of these reptiles were transformed into mammals. If we
had had the opportunity of studying the early mammals of the Rocky
Mountain region with a full appreciation of the possibilities of
evolution, we should have perceived that they were essentially of the
same stock and ancestral to our modern types. There were little camels
scarcely more than twelve inches high, little taller than cotton-tail
rabbits and smaller than the jackass rabbits; horses 15 inches high,
scarcely larger than, and very similar in build to, the little English
coursing hound known as the whippet; it is not improbable that we shall
find the miniature deer; there certainly existed ancestral wolves and
foxes of similarly small proportions. You have all read your Darwin
carefully enough to know that neither camels, horses, nor deer would
have evolved as they did except for the stimulus given to their limb and
speed development by the contemporaneous evolution of their enemies in
the dog family.
THE MIDDLE STAGE OF EVOLUTION.
A million and a half years later these same animals had attained a very
considerable size; the western country had become transformed by the
elevation of the plateaux into dry, grass-bearing uplands, where both
horses and deer of peculiarly American types were grazing. We have
recently secured some fresh light on the evolution of the American
deer. Besides the _Palaeryx_, which may be related to the true
American deer _Odocoileus_, we have found the complete skeleton of
a small animal named _Merycodus_, nineteen inches high, possessed
of a complete set of delicate antlers with the characteristic burr at
the base indicating the annual shedding of the horn, and a general
structure of skeleton which suggests our so-called pronghorn antelope,
_Antilocapra_, rather than our true American deer, _Odocoileus_.
This was in all probability a distinctively American type.
Its remains have been found in eastern Colorado in the geological
age known as Middle Miocene, which is estimated (_sub rosa_, like
all our other geological estimates), at about a million and a half years
of age. Our first thought as we study this small, strikingly graceful
animal, is wonder that such a high degree of specialization and
perfection was reached at so early a period; our second thought is the
reverence for age sentiment.
THE AFRICAN PERIOD IN AMERICA.
The conditions of environment were different from what they were before
or what they are now. These animals flourished during the period in
which western America must have closely resembled the eastern and
central portions of Africa at the present time.
This inference is drawn from the fact that the predominant fauna of
America in the Middle and Upper Miocene Age and in the Pliocene was
closely analogous to the still extant fauna of Africa. It is true we had
no real antelopes in this country, in fact none of the bovines, and no
giraffes; but there was a camel which my colleague Matthew has surnamed
the "giraffe camel," extraordinarily similar to the giraffe. There were
no hippopotami, no hyraces. All these peculiarly African animals, of
African origin, I believe, found their way into Europe at least as far
as the Sivalik Hills of India, but never across the Bering Sea
Isthmus. The only truly African animal which reached America, and which
flourished here in an extraordinary manner, was the elephant, or rather
the mastodon, if we speak of the elephant in its Miocene stage of
evolution. However, the resemblance between America and Africa is
abundantly demonstrated by the presence of great herds of horses, of
rhinoceroses, both long and short limbed, of camels in great variety,
including the giraffe-like type which was capable of browsing on the
higher branches of trees, of small elephants, and of deer, which in
adaptation to somewhat arid conditions imitated the antelopes in general
structure.
ELIMINATION BY THE GLACIAL PERIOD.
The Glacial Period eliminated half of this fauna, whereas the equatorial
latitude of the fauna in Africa saved that fauna from the attack of the
Glacial Period, which was so fatally destructive to the animals in the
more northerly latitudes of America. The glaciers or at least the very
low temperature of the period eliminated especially all the African
aspects of our fauna. This destructive agency was almost as baneful and
effective as the mythical Noah's flood. When it passed off, there
survived comparatively few indigenous North American animals, but the
country was repopulated from the entire northern hemisphere, so that the
magnificent wild animals which our ancestors found here were partly
North American and partly Eurasiatic in origin.
ELIMINATION BY MAN.
Our animal fortune seemed to us so enormous that it never could be
spent. Like a young rake coming into a very large inheritance, we
attacked this noble fauna with characteristic American improvidence, and
with a rapidity compared with which the Glacial advance was eternally
slow; the East went first, and in fifty years we have brought about an
elimination in the West which promises to be even more radical than that
effected by the ice. We are now beginning to see the end of the North
American fauna; and if we do not move promptly, it will become a matter
of history and of museums. The bison is on the danger line; if it
survives the fatal effects of its natural sluggishness when abundantly
fed, it still runs the more insidious but equally great danger of
inbreeding, like the wild ox of Europe. The chances for the wapiti and
elk and the western mule and black-tail deer are brighter, provided that
we move promptly for their protection. The pronghorn is a wonderfully
clever and adaptive animal, crawling under barb-wire fences, and thus
avoiding one of the greatest enemies of Western life. Last summer I was
surprised beyond measure to see the large herds of twenty to forty
pronghorn antelopes still surviving on the Laramie plains, fenced in on
all sides by the wires of the great Four-Bar Ranch, part of which I
believe are stretched illegally.
RECENT DISAPPEARANCE.
I need not dwell on the astonishingly rapid diminution of our larger
animals in the last few years; it would be like "carrying coals to
Newcastle" to detail personal observations before this Club, which is
full of men of far greater experience and knowledge than myself. On the
White River Plateau Forest Reserve, which is destined to be the
Adirondacks of Colorado, with which many of you are familiar, the deer
disappeared in a period of four years. Comparatively few are left.
The most thoroughly devastated country I know of is the Uintah Mountain
Forest Reserve, which borders between southwestern Wyoming and northern
Utah. I first went through this country in 1877. It was then a wild
natural region; even a comparatively few years ago it was bright with
game, and a perfect flower garden. It has felt the full force of the
sheep curse. I think any one of you who may visit this country now will
agree that this is not too strong a term, and I want to speak of the
sheep question from three standpoints: First, as of a great and
legitimate industry in itself; second, from the economic standpoint;
third, from the standpoint of wild animals.
GENERAL RESULTS OF GRAZING.
The formerly beautiful Uintah Mountain range presents a terrible example
of the effects of prolonged sheep herding. The under foliage is entirely
gone. The sheep annually eat off the grass tops and prevent seeding
down; they trample out of life what they do not eat; along the principal
valley routes even the sage brush is destroyed. Reforesting by the
upgrowth of young trees is still going on to a limited extent, but is in
danger. The water supply of the entire Bridger farming country, which is
dependent upon the Uintah Mountains as a natural reservoir, is rapidly
diminishing; the water comes in tremendous floods in the spring, and
begins to run short in the summer, when it is most needed. The
consequent effects upon both fish and wild animals are well known to
you. No other animal will feed after the sheep. It is no exaggeration to
say, therefore, that the sheep in this region are the enemies of every
living thing.
BALANCE OF NATURE.
Even the owner cannot much longer enjoy his range, because he is
operating against _the balance of nature_. The last stage of
destruction which these innocent animals bring about has not yet been
reached, but it is approaching; it is the stage in which there is _no
food left for the sheep themselves_. I do not know how many pounds
of food a sheep consumes in course of a year--it cannot be much less
than a ton--but say it is only half a ton, how many acres of dry western
mountain land are capable of producing half a ton a year when not
seeding down? As long as the consumption exceeds the production of the
soil, it is only a question of time when even the sheep will no longer
find subsistence.
THE LAST STAGE TO BE SEEN IN THE ORIENT.
While going through these mountains last summer and reflecting upon the
prodigious changes which the sheep have brought about in a few years, it
occurred to me that we must look to Oriental countries in order to see
the final results of sheep and goat grazing in semi-arid climates. I
have proposed as an historical thesis a subject which at first appears
somewhat humorous, namely, "The Influence of Sheep and Goats in
History." I am convinced that the country lying between Arabia and
Mesopotamia, which was formerly densely populated, full of beautiful
cities, and heavily wooded, has been transformed less by the action of
political causes than by the unrestricted browsing of sheep and
goats. This browsing destroyed first the undergrowth, then the forests,
the natural reservoirs of the country, then the grasses which held
together the soil, and finally resulted in the removal of the soil
itself. The country is now denuded of soil, the rocks are practically
bare; it supports only a few lions, hyaes, gazelles, and Bedouins. Even
if the trade routes and mines, on which Brooks Adams in his "New Empire"
dwells so strongly as factors of all civilization, were completely
restored, the population could not be restored nor the civilization,
because there is nothing in this country for people to live upon. The
same is true of North Africa, which, according to Gibbon, was once the
granary of the Roman Empire. In Greece to-day the goats are now
destroying the last vestiges of the forests.
I venture the prediction that the sheep industry on naturally semi-arid
lands is doomed; that the future feeding of both sheep and cattle will
be on irrigated lands, and that the forests will be carefully guarded by
State and Nature as natural reservoirs.
COMMERCIALISM AND IDEALISM.
By contrast to the sheep question, which is a purely economic or
utilitarian one, and will settle itself, if we do not settle it by
legislation based on scientific observation, the preservation of the
Sequoia and of our large wild animals is one of pure sentiment, of
appreciation of the ideal side of life; we can live and make money
without either. We cannot even use the argument which has been so
forcibly used in the case of the birds, that the cutting down of these
trees or killing of these animals will upset the balance of nature.
I believe in every part of the country--East, West, North, and South--we
Americans have reached a stage of civilization where if the matter were
at issue the majority vote would unquestionably be, _let us preserve
our wild animals._
We are generally considered a commercial people, and so we are; but we
are more than this, we are a people of ideas, and we value them. As
stated in the preamble of the Sequoia bill introduced on Dec. 8, 1903,
we must legislate for the benefit and enjoyment of the people, and I may
add for the greatest happiness of the largest number, not only of the
present but of future generations.
So far as my observation goes, preservation can only be absolutely
insured by national legislation.
GOVERNMENT LEGISLATION BY ENGLAND, BELGIUM, GERMANY.
The English, a naturally law-abiding people, seem to have a special
faculty for enforcing laws. By co-operation with the Belgian Government
they have taken effective and remarkably successful measures for the
protection of African game. As for Germany, in 1896 Mr. Gosselin, of
the British Embassy in Berlin, reported as follows for German East Africa:
That the question of preserving big game in German East Africa has been
under the consideration of the local authorities for some time past, and
a regulation has been notified at Dar-es-Salaam which it is hoped will
do something toward checking the wanton destruction of elephants and
other indigenous animals. Under this regulation every hunter must take
out an animal license, for which the fee varies from 5 to 500 rupees,
the former being the ordinary fee for natives, the latter for elephant
and rhinoceros hunting, and for the members of sporting expeditions into
the interior. Licenses are not needed for the purpose of obtaining food,
nor for shooting game damaging cultivated land, nor for shooting apes,
beasts of prey, wild boars, reptiles, and all birds except ostriches and
cranes. Whatever the circumstances, the shooting is prohibited of all
young game--calves, foals, young elephants, either tuskless or having
tusks under three kilos, all female game if recognizable--except, of
course, those in the above category of unprotected animals. Further, in
the Moschi district of Kilima-Njaro, no one, whether possessing a
license or not, is allowed without the special permission of the
Governor to shoot antelopes, giraffes, buffaloes, ostriches, and cranes.
Further, special permission must be obtained to hunt these with nets, by
kindling fires, or by big drives. Those who are not natives have also
to pay l00 rupees for the first elephant killed, and 250 for each
additional one, and 50 rupees for the first rhinoceros and 150 for each
succeeding one. Special game preserves are also to be established, and
Major von Wissmann, in a circular to the local officers, explains that
no shooting whatever will be allowed in these without special permission
from the Government. The reserves will be of interest to science as a
means of preserving from extirpation the rarer species, and the Governor
calls for suggestions as to the best places for them. They are to extend
in each direction at least ten hours' journey on foot. He further asks
for suggestions as to hippopotamus reserves, where injury would not be
done to plantations. Two districts are already notified as game
sanctuaries. Major von Wissmann further suggests that the station
authorities should endeavor to domesticate zebras (especially when
crossed with muscat and other asses and horses), ostriches, and hyaena
dogs crossed with European breeds. Mr. Gosselin remarks that the best
means of preventing the extermination of elephants would be to fix by
international agreement among all the Powers on the East African coast a
close time for elephants, and to render illegal the exportation or sale
of tusks under a certain age.
In December, 1900, Viscount Cranborne in the House of Commons reported
as follows: