ANIMALS EXTINCT IN THE HISTORIC PERIOD. 349 



ceeding the gigantic diiiornis in size. The first important discovery 

 of remains left by this lost species is quite recent. It was announced 

 to the French Academy of Sciences by Geoftroy Saint-Hihiire, the 27th 

 of January, 1851. Enormous eggs brought to France by Alfred Aba- 

 die, captain of a merchantman, excited amazement in every one, savants 

 and ignorant alike. These eggs, six times as large as an ostrich's, 

 and equal to 148 hen's-eggs, had a capacity of more than IJ gallon. 

 Nothing more astonishing had ever been seen. From a few scattered 

 bits of bones found in the same spot, Saint-Hilaire traced vestiges of 

 the bird to which the eggs must be attributed, and designated the 

 animal by the name of the ^pyornis maximus. The island of Mada- 

 gascar presenting so extended a surface, unexplored in all parts, it 

 was readily believed that the sepyornis might still be wandering over 

 its vast solitudes, for in Madagascar, as in Xew Zealand, the natives 

 speak of enormous birds as existing in the woods and mountains. 

 Since the last exploration of the great African island, this seems an 

 improbability. An intelligent young naturalist, Grandidier, made a 

 voyage to Madagascar a few years ago ; after gaining much informa- 

 tion, he returned once more to the region which promised new dis- 

 coveries. Quite lately, while making excavations in the midst of a 

 marshy tract in Amboulisate, on the west coast of the island, Grandi- 

 dier had the good fortune to collect some bones that seem to belong 

 to the bird with those incomparable eggs. These fragments, it is 

 true, are nothing more than two vertebrae, a thigh-bone, and a leg- 

 bone ; they enabled Milne-Edwards to demonstrate the relationship 

 of the sepyornis with the ostrich, cassowary, and dinornis, and to prove 

 the fact that the Madagascar bird, with a heavier body and stouter 

 legs than any of the dinornis had, yet was not so high in stature as 

 the largest species of Xew Zealand. Remains of the aepyornis of in- 

 ferior size found in small quantity disclose, moreover, the existence 

 of several species belonging to the same type, and inhabiting the same 

 region at an area doubtless not very remote. 



Every one in France and other parts of Europe is aware of the 

 rapid decrease of birds. The larger kinds will, perhaps, be exter- 

 minated before a century passes. The bustard, which, in Buffon's 

 time, was commonly enough found in the plains of Poitou and Cham- 

 pagne, is now extremely rare. The tetras, better known under the 

 name of the great heath-cock, formerly abundant in our forests, is 

 now found only in a few localities. Game so superb offers irresistible 

 temptations to sportsmen. 



In past ages the great auks {Alca impe^mis)^ fitted for swimming, 

 but unable to fly, abounded on the shores of the arctic regions ; they 

 have been destroyed, annihilated. At a rather remote period they 

 were common on all the coasts of Scandinavia, as in the Orkney and 

 Faroe islands, and on the banks of Xewfoundland; at a date nearer 

 our own, they were still frequently seen in Lapland and Greenland ; 



