10 INTKODUCTORY. 



on many occasions since, notably when its Continental 

 haunts were shaken by the cannon of 1870-71 ; and a hen 

 bustard met the usual fate, if I remember rightly, only 

 two or three years ago. So too, we are told, the old stock 

 of capercailzie died out in the middle of the eighteenth 

 century, to be reintroduced over fifty years later by Lord 

 Fyfe and Sir T. Fowell Buxton. These lost islanders, a 

 fuller list of which will be found in the interesting chapter 

 on paleontology in Lydekker's volume on ' British Mam- 

 mals,' ^ will, there seems reason for supposing, be joined 

 at no remote future by the polecat, wild cat, marten, and 

 black rat, among quadrupeds, and by the ruff and bearded 

 reedling, bittern and chough, among birds. 



These recent changes would seem, with the exceptions 

 of the vanishing black rat and chough, to be the w^ork of 

 man, the direct outcome of his improvements on the face 

 of the earth. The discomfiture of the two exceptions 

 seems to have been rather the work of their own kindred. 



It is the order of things that the children of man shall 

 increase and supplant the wilder children of nature. The 

 transformation that is being achieved under the eyes of 

 the present generation in other continents more recently 

 exploited has long since reached the climax in these 

 islands. Gone are the vast herds of mixed game that but 

 yesterday roamed the African veldt, evoking the admi- 

 ration of even such hunters as Cornwallis Harris and 

 Gordon-Cumming ; gone too are the great herds of bison 

 that, within the memory indeed of Mr Roosevelt and other 

 living American sjitortsmen, thundered over the boundless 

 prairies. Populous capitals stand on land just reclaimed 

 from the kangaroo and dingo; and I have occupied quarters 

 on the outskirts of Buitenzoorg, in Java, where a few years 

 ago tigers prowled among the affrighted villagers, but 

 where nowadays one can lie at ease in the cool verandah 

 and imagine oneself in the respectable security of a London 

 suburb. These changes are not all matter for rejoicing, 



i Allen's Naturalist's Library. 



