122 INTEODUCTION OF BIEDS. 



the ostricli egg, or about one Imiidred and fifty times that of the 

 hen. 



But though we have no evidence that man has exterminated 

 many species of birds, we know that his persecutions have caused 

 their disappearance from many locahties where they once were 

 common, and greatly diminished their numbers in others. The 

 cappercailzie, Tetrao urogallus, the finest of the grouse family, 

 formerly abundant in Scotland, had become extinct in Great Brit- 

 ain, but has been reintroduced from Sweden.* The ostrich is 

 mentioned, by many old travellers, as common on the Isthmus of 

 Suez down to the middle of the seventeenth century. It appears 

 to have frequented Palestine, Syria, and even Asia Minor at ear- 

 lier periods, but is now rarely found except in the seclusion of 

 remoter deserts, f 



The modem increased facilities of transportation have brought 

 distant markets within reach of the professional hunter, and there- 

 by given a new mipulse to his destructive propensities. Not only 

 do all Great Britain and Ireland contribute to the supply of game 

 for the British capital, but the canvas-back duck of the Potomac, 

 and even the prairie hen from the basin of the Mississippi, may 

 be found at the stalls of the London poulterer. Kohl X informs 



* The cappercailzie, or tjader, as lie is called in Sweden, is a bird of singu- 

 lar habits, and seems to want some of the protective instincts which secure 

 most other wild birds from destruction. The younger Lsestadius frequently 

 notices the tjader, in his very remarkable account of the Swedish Laplanders. 

 The tjader, though not a bird of passage, is migratory, or rather wandering in 

 domicile, and appears to undertake very purposeless and absurd journeys. 

 " When he flits," says Lsestadius, " he follows a straight course, and some- 

 times pursues it quite out of the country. It is said that, in foggy weather, 

 he sometimes flies out to sea, and, when tired, falls into the water and is 

 drowned. It is accordingly observed that, when he flies westwardly, towards 

 the mountains, he soon comes back again ; but when he takes an eastwardly 

 course, he returns no more, and for a long time is very scarce in Lapland. 

 From this it would seem that he turns back from the bald mountains, when 

 he discovers that he has strayed from his proper home, the wood ; but when 

 he finds himself over the Baltic, where he can not alight to arise and collect 

 himself, he flies on until he is exhausted and falls into the sea." — Peteus 

 L^STADius, Journal afforsta aret, etc., p. 335. 



\ Frescobaldi saw ostriches in the fourteenth century between Suez and Mt. 

 Sinai. Viaggio in Terra Santa, p. 65. See also Vansleb, Voyage d'Egypte, 

 p. 103, and an article in Petermann, Mittheilungen, 1870, p. 380, entitled Die 

 Verbreitung des Sirausses in Asien. 



t Die HerzogthUmer Schleswig und Holstein, i., p. 203. 



