European travellers in this country frequently allude to the American
forest as remarkable for its solitude and deficiency of animal life.
Captain Hardy remarks that a foreigner is struck with surprise, when
rambling through the bush, at the scarcity of birds, rabbits, and hares,
and is astonished when in the deepest recesses of the wild country he
sees but little increase of their numbers. When paddling his canoe
through lake and river, he will startle but few pairs of exceedingly
timid waterfowl where in Europe they swarm in multitudes. This scarcity
of animals, I would remark, is not peculiar to the American wilderness.
The same fact has been observed in extensive forests both in Europe and
Asia; and in proportion as the traveller penetrates into their interiors
he finds a smaller number of animals of almost every species. Birds,
insects, and quadrupeds will multiply, like human beings, in a certain
ratio with the progress of agriculture, so long as there remains a
sufficiency of wild wood to afford them a refuge and a home. They use
the forest chiefly for shelter, and the open grounds for forage; the
woods are their house, the meadows their farm.
I had an opportunity for observing these facts very early in life, when
making a pedestrian tour through several of the States. I commenced my
journey in autumn, and being alone, I was led to take note of many
things which, had any one accompanied me, would have escaped my
observation. After passing a few weeks of the winter in Nashville, I
directed my course through Tennessee and Virginia, and was often led
through extensive ranges of forest. I never saw birds in any part of the
United States so numerous as in the woods adjoining the city of
Nashville, which was surrounded with immense cornfields and cotton
plantations. But while walking through the country I could not help
observing the scarcity of birds and small quadrupeds in the woods
whenever I was at a long distance from any village or habitation.
Sometimes night would draw near before I had reached a hamlet or
farm-house, where I might take lodging. On such occasions the silence of
the woods increased my anxiety, which was immediately relieved upon
hearing the cardinal or the mocking-bird, whose cheerful notes always
indicated my approach to cultivated fields and farms.
That this scarcity of animal life is not peculiar to the American forest
we have the testimony of St. Pierre, who says of the singing birds: “It
is very remarkable that all over the globe they discover an instinct
which attracts them to the habitations of man. If there be but a single
hut in the forest, all the singing birds of the vicinity come and settle
round it. Nay, they are not to be found except in places which are
inhabited. I have travelled more than six hundred leagues through the
forests of Russia, but never met with small birds except in the
neighborhood of villages. On making the tour of fortified places in
Russian Finland with the general officers of the corps of engineers with
which I served, we travelled sometimes at the rate of twenty leagues a
day without seeing on the road either village or bird. But when we
perceived the sparrows fluttering about, we concluded we must be near
some inhabited place. In this indication we were never once deceived.”
It may be remarked, however, that birds and quadrupeds do not seek the
company of man when they congregate near his habitations. They are
attracted by the increased amount of all their means of subsistence that
follows the cultivation of the land. The granivorous birds, no less than
the insect-feeders, are benefited by the extension of agriculture. Even
if no cereal grains were raised, the cultivated fields would supply
them, in the product of weeds alone, more sustenance than a hundred
times the same area in forest. Before there were any settlements of
white men in this country, birds and small quadrupeds must have
congregated chiefly about the wooded borders of prairies, on the banks
of rivers, in fens and cranberry meadows, and around the villages of the
red man. Their numbers over the whole continent were probably much
smaller than at the present time, notwithstanding the merciless
destruction of them by gunners and trappers.
There are but few tribes of animals that may be supposed to thrive only
in the wild forest; and even these, if unmolested by man, would always
find a better subsistence in a half-cultivated country abounding in
woods of sufficient extent to afford them shelter and a nursery for
their young, than in a continuous wilderness. Beasts of prey, however,
are destroyed by man in the vicinity of all his settlements, to protect
himself and his property from their attacks, and game-birds and animals
of the chase are recklessly hunted both for profit and amusement. In
Europe the clearing of the original forest was so gradual that the wild
animals multiplied more rapidly with the progress of agriculture.
Civilization advanced so slowly, and the arts made such tardy and
gradual progress, that all species enjoyed considerable immunity from
man. The game-birds and animals of the chase were not only preserved in
forests attached to princely estates, but they were also protected by
game-laws at a time when such laws were less needful because so few of
the peasantry were accustomed to the use of the gun. While the royal
forests yielded these creatures a shelter and abode, the cultivated
lands near their bounds afforded them subsistence; and they must have
multiplied more rapidly in proportion to the increase of human
population than in America after its settlement, where very different
circumstances and events were witnessed.
America was colonized and occupied by civilized people, and the forests
were swept away with a rapidity unprecedented in the history of man.
Every pioneer was a hunter provided with guns and ammunition; every male
member of his family over seven years of age was a gunner and a trapper.
The sparse inhabitants of the forest, which if unmolested, as in the
early period of European civilization, would have multiplied in
proportion to their increased means of subsistence, have been, on the
contrary, shot by the gunner, insnared by the trapper, and wantonly
destroyed by boys for amusement, until some species have been nearly
exterminated. Instead of increasing in a ratio with the supplies of
their natural food, many tribes of them are now more scarce than they
were in the primitive forest. The small birds alone, whose prolific
habits and diminutive size were their protection, have greatly
multiplied.
But even if birds and quadrupeds were unmolested by man, there are some
tribes that would prefer to reside in the deep wood, while others would
fix their abode in orchards and gardens. The wild pigeon has not been
favored in any respect by the clearing of the forest. The food of this
species is abundantly supplied in the wilds of nature in the product of
beechen woods, hazel copses, groves of the chinquapin oak, and of the
shores of lakes and arms of the sea covered with Canada rice and the
maritime pea-vine. Their immense powers of flight enable them to
transport themselves to new feeding-grounds after any present stock is
exhausted, and to wing their way over hundreds of miles between their
different repasts. This cannot be said of the grouse, the turkey, and
the partridge, whose feeble powers of flight confine them to a narrow
extent of territory; and these birds must have been frequently robbed of
their farinaceous stores by flocks of wild pigeons during their
itinerant foraging.
There are many species of birds which we associate with the wild wood
because they breed and find shelter there, but if we watched their
habits we should learn that even these solitary birds make the
cultivated grounds their principal feeding-places. Such are the quail,
the partridge, and very many of our game-birds. The quail and the
partridge are omnivorous, but, like our common poultry, are more eager
to seize a grub or an insect than a grain of corn. A potato-field is
hardly less valuable to a flock of quails than a field of corn, and
affords more sustenance to the snipe and the woodcock than any other
grounds. But these birds, as well as others, have diminished as those
natural advantages have increased that should promote their
multiplication.
Even our sylvias and thrushes, the most timid of all the winged tribe,
birds hardly ever seen except in lonely woods, multiply with the
clearing of the country and the increased abundance of their insect
food. The vesper thrushes, that shun the presence of man, and will
become silent in their musical evening if the rustling of the bushes
indicates the approach of a human footstep, are more numerous in the
woods of Cambridge than in any other part of the country. These are
chiefly of maple, filled with underbrush, and afford the birds a harbor
and a shelter, while the adjoining fields, in a state of the highest
tillage, supply them plentifully with their natural food, consisting of
worms and the larvæ of insects.