The Earth as Modified by Human ActionMarsh, George P. (George Perkins)
History
The Earth as Modified by Human Action
Marsh, George P. (George Perkins)
Conservation of natural resources; Human geography; Nature -- Effect of human beings on; Physical geography
Modern naturalists identify the elk with the eland, the wisent with the
auerochs. The period when the ur and the schelk became extinct is not
known. The auerochs survived in Prussia until the middle of the last
century, but unless it is identical with a similar quadruped said to be
found on the Caucasus, it now exists only in the Russian imperial forest
of Bialowitz where about a thousand are still preserved, and in some
great menageries, as for example that at Schonbrunn, near Vienna, which,
in 1852, had four specimens. The eland, which is closely allied to the
American wapiti if not specifically the same animal, is still kept in
the royal preserves of Prussia, to the number of four or five hundred
individuals. The chamois is becoming rare, and the ibex or steinbock,
once common in all the high Alps, is now believed to be confined to the
Cogne mountains in Piedmont, between the valleys of the Dora Baltea and
the Orco, though it is said that a few still linger about the Grandes
Jorasses near Cormayeur.
The chase, which in early stages of human life was a necessity, has
become with advancing civilization not merely a passion but a
dilettanteism, and the cruel records of this pastime are among the most
discreditable pages in modern literature. It is true that in India and
other tropical countries, the number and ferocity of the wild beasts not
only justify but command a war of extermination against them, but the
indiscriminate slaughter of many quadrupeds which are favorite objects
of the chase can urge no such apology. Late official reports from India
state the number of human victims of the tiger, the leopard, the wolf
and other beasts of prey, in ten "districts," at more then twelve
thousand within three years, and we are informed on like authority that
within the last six years more than ten thousand men, women, and
children have perished in the same way in the Presidency of Bengal
alone. One tiger, we are told, had killed more than a hundred people,
and finally stopped the travel on an important road, and another had
caused the desertion of thirteen villages and thrown 250 square miles
out of cultivation. In such facts we find abundant justification of the
slaying of seven thousand tigers, nearly six thousand leopards, and
twenty-five hundred other ravenous beasts in the Bengal Presidency, in
the space of half a dozen years. But the humane reader will not think
the value of the flesh, the skin, and other less important products of
inoffensive quadrupeds a satisfactory excuse for the ravages committed
upon them by amateur sportsmen as well as by professional hunters. In
1861, it was computed that the supply of the English market with ivory
cost the lives of 8,000 elephants. Others make the number much larger
and it is said that half as much ivory is consumed in the United States
as in Great Britain. In Ceylon, where the elephants are numerous and
destructive to the crops, as well as dangerous to travellers, while
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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