HISTORIC EPOCH. 173 



extinctions have taken place, and this altogether apart from 

 the effects produced by man's cultivation and domestication. 

 The wild-boar, wild-ox, bear, wolf, and beaver have dis- 

 appeared from Britain ; and every century their tenure of 

 Europe becomes more slender and uncertain. The dodo has 

 become extinct in the Mauritius, the solitaire in Eodriguez, 

 the sepiornis in Madagascar, the dinornis in New Zealand, 

 the Phillip's Island parrot from Australia, and the rytina 

 from the rivers and estuaries of Kamtschatka, And as 

 with these, so it will shortly be with others whose circum- 

 scribed ranges are gradually being broken in upon by new 

 conditions, imposed either by natural change or by man's 

 progress and civilisation. The apteryx of New Zealand, 

 the ornithorhynchus, echidna, and kangaroo of Australia, 

 the mooruk of New Britain, the ostrich, elephant, and 

 giraffe of Africa, the anrochs of Europe, the beaver and 

 bison of America, the musk-ox of the arctic regions, and 

 many others, look more like the residuary forms of the ter- 

 tiary, than the advancing species of a newer era. And as 

 with animals, so it has been and will be with many plants 

 (the gigantic Wellingtonia, for instance, confined to a few 

 narrow valleys in California) ; only we have been less ob- 

 servant of their mutations, and are merely beginning to note 

 their specific restrictions. 



As history has failed to note geological mutations and 

 vital extinctions, so we ask her in vain for any evidence of 

 new creations. No doubt, naturalists have now and then 

 announced the " discovery" of a new species of plant or 

 animal, but whether these were existing forms previously 

 unnoticed, or new forms only recently introduced, the im- 

 perfection of history leaves us no means of determining. 

 And yet, reasoning from our knowledge of the past, the 

 appearance of new species must take place as infallibly as 

 the disappearance of the old. So long as the energies of 



