For Example, During A Week Spent At Fort Smith, Preble Had Out A
Line Of 50 Mouse-Traps Every Night And Caught Only One Shrew And
One Meadowmouse In The Week.
Four years before he had trapped on
exactly the same ground, catching 30 or 40 Meadowmice every night.
Again, in 1904 it was possible to see 100 Muskrats any fine evening.
In 1907, though continually on the lookout, I saw less than a score
in six months. Redsquirrels varied in the same way.
Of course, the Rabbits themselves were the extreme case, millions
in 1904, none at all in 1907. The present, then, was a year of low
ebb. The first task was to determine whether this related to all
mammalian life. Apparently not, because Deermice, Lynxes, Beaver,
and Caribou were abundant. Yet these are not their maximum years;
the accounts show them to have been so much more numerous last
year.
There is only one continuous statistical record of the abundance
of animals, that is the returns of the fur trade. These have been
kept for over 200 years, and if we begin after the whole continent
was covered by fur-traders, they are an accurate gauge of the
abundance of each species. Obviously, this must be so, for the whole
country is trapped over every year, all the furs are marketed, most
of them through the Hudson's Bay Company, and whatever falls into
other hands is about the same percentage each year, therefore the
H. B. Co.
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