Lancaster Daily Intelligencer

ROAMED LANCASTER COUNTY.

How the Wild Animals Scoured Field and Forest Here in the Olden Time.

Dr. S. S. Rathvon in Lancaster Farmer.

In the "long ago," without a doubt, the deer, the bear, the panther and the wolf were local inhabitants of the territory now recognized as the county of Lancaster, but these have long since been driven away before the march of civilization and improvement to regions far beyond its borders. Perhaps some sojourning octogenarian may still have a recollection of the presence of one or more of them, or of some "old settler," who may have been familiar with some of them in his early days.

The class mammalia had probably always a limited existence here, excepting the groundhog, the opossum and the squirrel, which even now only require to be "let alone" to insure their rapid increase. Before the advent of the white man the "Norway rat" was probably altogether unknown, but it now has been localized and may legitimately be regarded as a native.

Of the smaller species of animals, belonging to other classes, and especially of the Insecta, there is a redundancy, and civilization and cultivation seem rather to increase their numbers than to diminish them. But whether this state of things existed when the dense primitive forests of Lancaster county were inhabited by the Red men and his animal contemporaries—the quadrupeds and birds—is a matter gravely to be doubted. The "Canada Lynx" or wild cat, has been shot in this county within the last twenty years, and it is barely possible that a very few individuals may still be found in the woody regions. Forty years ago a stray panther was seen, or supposed to have been seen, within the county; but it needed a further corroboration to redeem the assumption from passing into a myth, and the corroboration was never secured. Civilization has, however, vastly increased the numbers of a few mammals, especially of those called rats and mice.