INTRODUCTORY. 



that we find nowadays that such creatures at any rate as 

 come within the ken of these gentry, " vermin " and the 

 like, are very often called by the same name in counties 

 far apart and with vastly different dialects. This, while 

 it tends in course of time to simplify matters and facilitate 

 intercourse, detracts vastly from the interest, philological 

 or otherwise, of these same local names. 



I come for a moment to what is perhaps the most inter- 

 esting aspect of the contemplation of any country's fauna, 



the comparison of its condition at the present 

 mammals ^ av w ^h what it was five-and-twenty, fifty, or 



five hundred years ago. In the case of most 

 British mammals, this comparison becomes doubly inter- 

 esting in view of the impossibility, on account of their 

 isolation, and leaving out of account private efforts towards 

 reintroduction, of the reappearance of any species that has 

 once become extinct. In Continental countries, whatever 

 the practical probabilities and improbabilities may be, this 

 impossibility has, theoretically at any rate, little force. To 

 us, however, the boar and bear, the wolf, beaver, and rein- 

 deer, can of their own accord never more return. To our 

 islands they are as dead as are the rhytina 1 and great auk 

 to all the world. Polar bears may occasionally be sighted, 

 from the bridge of some transatlantic steamer, drifting on 

 ice-floes far south of their natural range ; but it will require 

 a miracle indeed to restore these vanished Britons. Ac- 

 cording to Mr Harting, 2 the last British bear died in the 

 ninth century ; the last boar in the seventeenth century ; 

 the last wolf in Ireland was killed as late as the middle of 

 the eighteenth century ; the last beaver and reindeer had 

 gone about the twelfth century. In like manner, the last 

 survivor of the old native stock of bustards was bagged in 

 1829, though this striking bird has visited these islands 



1 For the causes of extinction of the rhytina, more commonly known 

 as Steller's sea-cow, see an interesting article in the ' American Natu- 

 ralist ' for December 1887. 



2 Extinct British Animals. 



