far into the details of history; for a few quick glances at a few high
points will be quite sufficient for the purpose in view.

Any man who reads the books which best tell the story of the development
of the American colonies of 1712 into the American nation of 1912, and
takes due note of the wild-life features of the tale, will say without
hesitation that when the American people received this land from the
bountiful hand of Nature, it was endowed with a magnificent and
all-pervading supply of valuable wild creatures. The pioneers and the
early settlers were too busy even to take due note of that fact, or to
comment upon it, save in very fragmentary ways.

Nevertheless, the wild-life abundance of early American days survived
down to so late a period that it touched the lives of millions of people
now living. Any man 55 years of age who when a boy had a taste for
"hunting,"--for at that time there were no "sportsmen" in America,--will
remember the flocks and herds of wild creatures that he saw and which
made upon his mind many indelible impressions.

"Abundance" is the word with which to describe the original animal life
that stocked our country, and all North America, only a short
half-century ago. Throughout every state, on every shore-line, in all
the millions of fresh water lakes, ponds and rivers, on every mountain
range, in every forest, _and even on every desert_, the wild flocks and
herds held sway. It was impossible to go beyond the settled haunts of
civilized man and escape them.

It was a full century after the complete settlement of New England and
the Virginia colonies that the wonderful big-game fauna of the great
plains and Rocky Mountains was really discovered; but the bison