ROOM II. RETROSPECTIVE SUMMARY. 135 



young and the disabled of other families, whether volant or 

 cursorial, now become the easy prey of the cats, dogs, and 

 rats, which accompany the Anglo-Saxon races wherever they 

 fix their habitations. 



The most rare and interesting indigenous species are at the 

 present moment rapidly diminishing, and must, ere long, be 

 exterminated by the carnivorous predatory mammalia, which 

 have, unfortunately, been added to the fauna of the Antipodes 

 within the last half century ; and the wild cats, (the progeny 

 of the European domestic species) are so numerous and 

 destructive, that it is vain to hope the Notomis (if any of the 

 genus still exists), or the rarer kinds of Apteryx, will long 

 escape the fate of the Dodo and its kindred ; their final 

 extinction cannot be very remote. Possibty, ere many years, 

 have passed away, the only known recent example of the 

 NOTORNIS, the individual which forms the subject of the fron- 

 tispiece of these unpretending pages, will be the sole relic of 

 its race, save the fossil bones preserved in the ancient deposits 

 of its country, and become as precious in the estimation of 

 the palaeontologist and ornithologist, as the head and foot of 

 the frugivorous pigeon of the Mauritius. 1 



1 See Messrs. Strickland and Melville's splendid and charming work, 

 " The Dodo and its kindred" 1 vol. 4to ; and " Wonders of Geology," 

 p. 130. 



