486 ORNITHOLOGICAL SKETCHES 
putably change in the course of time, and new forms replace 
those that are dying out. The Ibex and the Bearded Vulture— 
two representatives of the ancient Alpine fauna of Kurope— 
are perishing together. Both are children of the highest 
mountains, dependent on conditions of utter freedom and 
repose, and both have retreated before the all-destroying race 
of man into a few isolated mountain-ranges, where even the 
last survivors are approaching the period of their final ex- 
tinction. 
The Limmergeier of the Austrian and Swiss Alps has for 
some years past become a matter of story; it once dwelt 
there: and the same will ere long be the case in Spain. In 
the Balkan peninsula it is always one of the greatest rarities, 
and soon only the mountains of the Atlas and a few of the 
Asiatic ranges will harbour the bird, which in former years 
was the emblem of our own Alpine world. In the Austrian 
dominions the last of the Bearded Vultures now live in Tran- 
sylvania and the mountains at the Iron Gates; but rare as 
they are even there, it would still be possible to find a 
nest by careful observation, and I have already received 
skins from those districts. 
