EXTINCT srKcn:s.] 



POULTRY. 



[kxtinct species. 



on the face of the earth, or soaring through 

 the fields of the nir, lyintj hiiried in tlio depths 

 of the morass, or iinhedded in the various utrala 

 which help to form '• the great gloho" which 

 wo inliabit. In the Geology of Sir Charles 

 Lvell, we lind a notice of some of the species 

 tiiat have become extinct in our own island. 

 Besides those which have been driven out from 

 some haunts, and, everywhere, reduced in num- 

 ber, there are a few which have been wholly 

 extirpated; such as the ancient breed of indi- 

 genous horses, the wild boar, and the wild 

 oxen ; of which last, however, a few remains 

 are still preserved iu the parks of some of our 

 nobility. The beaver, which was eagerly 

 sought after for its fur, had become scarce at 

 the close of the ninth century, and, by the 

 twelfth century, was only to bo met with, ac- 

 cording to Giraldus do Barri, in one river in 

 AVales, and another in Scotland. The wolf, 

 once so much dreaded by our ancestors, is said 

 to have maintained its ground in Ireland so 

 late as the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury (1710) ; though it had been extirpated in 

 Scotland thirty years before, and in England 

 at a much earlier period. The bear, which in 

 AVales was regarded as a beast of the chase, 

 equal to the hare or the boar, only perished as 

 a native of Scotland in the year 1057. 



Many native birds of prey have also been 

 the subjects of unremitting persecution. The 

 eagles, larger hawks, and ravens, have dis- 

 appeared from the more cultivated districts. 

 The haunts of the mallard, the snipe, the red- 

 shank, and the bittern, have been drained 

 equally with the summer dwellings of the lap- 

 wing and the curlew. But these species still 

 lin<^er in some portion of the British isles: 

 whereas the large capercallie, or wood grouse, 

 formerly natives of the pine-forests of Ireland 

 and Scotland, have been destroyed within the 

 last fifty years. The egret and the crane, 

 which appear to have been formerly very com- 

 mon in Scotland- are now only occasional 

 visitants. 



" The bustard (^Olis /«?•(/«)," observes Graves, 

 in his British Ornithologij, "was formerly 

 seen in the downs and heaths of various parts 

 of our island, in flocks of forty or fifty birds ; 

 whereas it is now a circumstance of rare occur- 

 rence to meet with a single individual." 

 Bewick also remarks — " That they were for- 

 5 L 



mcrly moro common in this island than at pre- 

 sent ; they are now found only in the open 

 counties of the soutli and east, in the plains of 

 Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and some parts of 

 Yorkshire." In the few years that have 

 elapsed since liewick wrote, this bird lias 

 entirely disappeared from Wiltaliire and Dor- 

 setshire. 



The extinction of such a species as the dodo 

 (for wo must conclude, we fear, that this bird 

 is blotted out from the catalogue of living 

 animals) is remarkable. 



" The most striking example of the loss, even 

 within the last two centuries, of a remarkable 

 species, is that of the dodo — a bird first seen 

 by the Dutch, when they landed on the Isle of 

 France, at that time uninhabited, immediately 

 after the discovery of the passage to the East 

 Indies by the Cape of Good Hope. It was of 

 a large size and singular form ; its wings short, 

 like those of an ostrich, and wholly incapable 

 of sustaining its heavy body, even for a short 

 flight. In its general appearance it difiered 

 from the ostrich, cassowary, or any knowa 

 bird. 



" Many naturalists gave figures of the dodo, 

 after the commencement of the seventeenth 

 century ; and there is a painting of it in the 

 British Museum, which is said to have been 

 taken from a living individual. Beneath the 

 painting is a leg, in a fine state of preserva- 

 tion, which ornithologists are agreed cannot 

 belong to any other known bird. In the 

 museum at Oxford, also, there is a foot and a 

 head, in an imperfect state ; but M. Cuvicp 

 doubts the identity of this species with that of 

 which the painting is preserved in London. 



" In spite of the most active search, during 

 the last century, no information respecting the 

 dodo was obtained; and some authors have 

 gone so far as to pretend that it never existed ; 

 but, amongst the great mass of s.atisfactory 

 evidence in favour of the recent existence of 

 this species, we may mention that an assem- 

 blage of fossil bones were recently discovered, 

 under a bed of lava, in the Isle of France, and 

 sent to the Paris museum by M. Desjardins. 

 They almost all belonged to a large living 

 species of land-tortoise, called Testudo Indica; 

 but amongst them were the head, sternum, 

 and humerus of the dodo. M. Cuvier had 

 many of these valuable remains in Paris, and 



b09 



