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Show 154 IMP.ORTATION OF REIN-DEER INTO ICELAND. [Ch. IX. Ull oa m. h' and Buffon on the authority of old IS voyage, . . wr.i ters, re1 a t e a f ac t wh ich illustrates ver.y clearly. the prmCJple 1 . d b f the check winch the mcrease of one before exp ame y us, o . . 1 .1 amma necessar1 y oua-e rs to that of another. The Spamards had introduced goats into the island of J ua~ :Fernande~, where 1 b t 1cy ecame so prol 'fic as to furnish the ptrates who mfested 1 . • 'th 1 • 51those seas 'ons In order to cut off this resource WI prov · . f h b neers a number of dogs were turned loose mto rom t e ucca ' . . t 11 e t·s 1a n d ; an d so numerous did they beco.m e m their turn, th. at the destroyed the goats in every accessible part, after which they n umber of the wild dogs agam. d ecrease d* · As an example of the rapidity with which a large tract may become peopled by the offspring of a singl~ pair of ~uadrupeds, we may mention, that in the year 1773 thtrteen rem-deer were exported from Norway, only three of whic? reached Icel~nd. These were turned loose into the mountams of Guldbrmge Syssel where they multiplied so greatly, in the course of forty years, 'that it was not uncommon t~ meet. wi~h herds consisting of from forty to one hundred in various districts.' . In Lapland, observes a modern writer, the rem-d~er Is a los~r by his connexion with man, but Iceland will b.e tlu~ creatures paradise. There is, in the interior, a tract winch Sir G. ~ac· kenzie computes at not less than forty thousand. square m1les, without a single human habitation, and almost entirely unknown to the natives themselves. There are no wolves ; the Icelanders will keep out the bears; and the rein-deer, being almo~t un· molested by man, will have no enemy whatever, unless 1t has brought with it its own tormenting gad.fly t · . Besides the quadrupeds before enumerated by us, our do~es· tic fowls have also succeeded in the West Indies and Amer1ca, where they have the common fowl, the goose, the duck, the peacock, the pigeon, and the guinea-fowl. As these ~ere often taken suddenly from the temperate to very hot regiOns, they were not reared at first without much difficulty; but after a ,.. Buffon, vol. v., p. 100. Ulloa's Voyage, vol.:ii., P• 220. t Travels in Iceland in 1810, P· 342. Ch. IX.] EFFECTS OF TilE DIFFUSION OF MAN. 155 few generations they became familiarized to the climate which . ' ' m many cases, approached much nearer than that of Europe to the temperature of their original native countries. The f~ct of so many millions of wild and tame individuals of our d~mestic s~ecies, almost all of them the largest quadrupeds and bu·ds, havmg been propagated throughout the new continent within the short period that has elapsed since the discovery of America, while no appreciable improvement can have been made in the productive powers of that vast continent, affords abundant evidence of the extraordinary changes which accompany the diffusion and progressive advancement of the human race over the globe. 'l~hat it should have remained for us to witness such mighty revolutions is a proof, even if there was no other evidence, that the entrance of man into the planet is, comparatively speaking, of extremely modern date, and that the effects of his agency are only beginning to be felt. A modern writer has estimated, that there are in America upwards o~ four million square miles of useful soil, each capable of supportmg two hundred persons ; and nearly six million each mile .capa~le of supporting four hundred and ninety pers~ns *. If this conJecture be true, it will follow, as that author observes ~hat if the .natural resources of America were fully developed: ~t wo~ld afford sustenance to five times as great a number of mhab1tants as the entire mass of human beings existing at present upon the globe. The new continent, he thinks, though less than half the size of the old, contains an equal quantity of useful soil, and much more than an equal amount of productive power. Be this as it may, we may safely conclude that the amount of human population now existing, constitutes but a ~mall proportion of that which the globe is capable of supportmg, or .which it is destined to sustain at no distant period, by the rapld.progress of society, especially in America, Australia, and certam parts of the old continent. But if we reflect that already many millions of square miles of the most fertile land, occupied originally by a boundless >fc Maclaren, Art America, Encye. Britannic!'. |
