EXTINCT SPECIES.] 



POtlLTET. 



[extixct species. 



asserted that they left no doubt in his mind 

 that the huge bird was one of the gallinaceous 

 tribe." 



When new species, multiplying widely, and 

 requiring large supplies of food, are introduced 

 into a country, the older tenants of the soil 

 must necessarily be reduced by want, and some 

 classes must be destroyed. The millions of 

 wild cattle and horses which are established in 

 the New World, from the latitude of 25° N. 

 to 40° S.; the sheep and goats which have 

 multiplied enormously there, as well as the 

 cat and the rat, tlie latter having been intro- 

 duced unintentionally in ships; the dogs 

 which have at different periods become wild in 

 America, and hunt in packs, like the wolf and 

 the jackal ; and " the many millions of square 

 miles of the moat fertile land, originally oc- 

 cupied by a boundless variety of animal and 

 vegetable forms, which have been already 

 brought under the dominion of man, and com- 

 pelled, in a great measure, to yield nourish- 

 ment to him, and to a limited number of plants 

 and animals, which he has caused to increase ; 

 must convince us that the annihilation of a 

 multitude of species has already been effected, 

 and will continue to go on hereafter, iu certain 

 regions, iu a still more rapid ratio, as the 

 colonies of highly-civilised nations spread 

 themselves over unoccupied land." 



Those who have closely studied the poultry 

 question have doubted whether living creatures 

 do undergo, from generation to generation, 

 such changes as would be evidenced by the 

 conversion of a wild jungle fowl into the 

 marked and distinct sorts which constitute our 

 races of domestic fowls. "They doubt the 

 progressive transmutation of species, and are 

 more inclined to regard them as immutable. 

 That animals do vary, they readily allow ; but 

 they also believe there is a limit to their vari- 

 ation. The pea-fowl, for instance, and the 

 guinea-fowl, ought to have branched off into 

 as many breeds as the common fowl, if the 

 theory of derivation from the jungle fowl 

 were true. These innovators also say that 

 each creature has its natural disposition im- 

 planted in it from the first, which no art of 

 man can alter; that there are tameable and 

 untameable species of animals, unconquerablv 

 shy, and unhesitatingly confiding; that they 

 are reclaimable, partially reclaimable, and 

 810 



utterly irreclaimable ; and that those authors 

 who, by a pleasant legerdemain, so easily trans- 

 form one of the Indian ffalli into a barn-door 

 fowl — who put the Sonnerat's jungle cock, 

 or perhaps some quite apocryphal bird beneath 

 a bushel, hocus-pocus a little, lift up the cover, 

 and then exhibit a veritable chanticleer — write 

 as if they had only to catch any wild bird in 

 the woods, turn it into a court-yard for a week 

 or two, and make it straightway as tame as a 

 spaniel ; — an educational feat as yet imprac- 

 ticable with most of the creatures which fall 

 into our hands." 



Taking these various arguments into con- 

 sideration, it has been suggested that many 

 varieties of fowl are aboriginal (though no 

 longer to be met with in a wild state), and are 

 not the results, but the protegees of domestica- 

 tion ; that the wild race, the one which ibr- 

 merly ranged the primaeval woods and jungles, 

 is now extinct ; and that many of our domestic 

 animals are the survivors of extinct races — 

 survivors, because domesticable — of extirpated, 

 because defenceless creatures — and many na- 

 tural historical difficulties vanish, and become 

 reconcilable with what we see around us. 



There are other theorists who think that the 

 various breeds of poultry bear an analogy to 

 the different races of mankind, as found in the 

 different parts of the habitable globe. "Either," 

 they say, "you must commit the heresy of 

 asserting that Adam and Eve were not the 

 common parents of all mankind, or you must 

 give up your doubts about domestic cocks and 

 hens. Either you must allow the native Aus- 

 tralian man to be a distinct and peculiar species 

 of Homo, or you must admit the more than 

 probability of the Bengal jungle fowl being 

 the original type of our domestic fowls." In 

 meeting this argument, Mr. Eichardsou ob- 

 serves — that, " passing over the fact that no 

 one wild original species of man is pointed out 

 to fulfil the ofiice of type to the existing 

 human inhabitants of the world, in the sam 

 way as the Bengal jungle fowl is supposed to 

 be for domestic fowl — omitting all that, it may 

 be fairly remonstrated that the argument is 

 not a generous one, inasmuch as it takes an 

 unfair advantage of people's dislike to shock 

 the feelings of others, especially in matters 

 which, in the slightest degree, touch upon 

 Scripture history ; it is exactly the same kind 



