RACES DYING OUT. 385 



frequently incommoded by the love of peltry on the part 

 of a hat-wearing people ; but it is clear that no man with 

 a small family and a few respectable farm-servants, could 

 either permit a large and hungry wolf to be continually 

 peeping at midnight through the key-hole of the nursery, 

 or allow a brawny bruin to snuff too frequently under 

 the kitchen door (after having hugged the watch-dog to 

 death) when the servant-maids were at supper. The 

 extirpation, then, of at least two of those quondam Bri- 

 tish species became a work of necessity and mercy, and 

 might have been tolerated even on a Sunday between 

 sermons — especially as naturalists have it still in their 

 power to study the habits of similar wild beasts, by no 

 means yet extinct, in the neighbouring countries of France 

 and Germany. 



But the death of the Dodo and its kindred is a more 

 affecting fact, as involving the extinction of an entire race, 

 root and branch, and proving that death is a law of the 

 species, as well as of the individuals which compose it — 

 although the life of the one is so much more prolonged 

 than that of the other that we can seldom obtain any 

 positive proof of its extinction, except by the observance 

 of geological eras. Certain other still existing species, 

 well known to naturalists, may be said to be, as it were, 

 just hovering on the brink of destruction. One of the 

 largest and most remarkable of herbivorous animals — a 



