1348 The Zoologist — September, 1868. 



amusement to the missionary, the philanthropist, the ethnologist, and 

 the speculative naturalist: in Tasmania, the hotbed of missionary 

 enterprise, the original master only occupies a seat below its surface. 

 In a hundred instances the white man has rudely pushed aside and 

 trampled down the former lords of the soil, and, taking possession of 

 the seats they once occupied, gazes with philosophical curiosity on 

 their approaching extermination. A glance at the animal kingdom 

 will at once place this subject clearly before my readers, and will 

 show that neither bulk nor strength, ferocity nor numbers, can avail 

 against the favoured race of man : indeed it would seem that these 

 attributes are antagonistic rather than conducive to the prolonged life 

 of a species. 



The partial or geographical death of a species, to which I have 

 already alluded, gives us a kind of clew to the date of its final dis- 

 appearance. In selecting a country in which to ascertain the precise 

 date of the death of a species these islands have the great disadvantage 

 of a very limited area; but this perhaps is compensated by their more 

 accessible records. The records, however, are only incidental, and 

 are invariably made without any reference to their bearing on scientific 

 questions; indeed, there is every reason to suppose that had these 

 facts any other object than the favourite pastimes of kings and princes 

 who could neither read nor write, no records would ever have been 

 preserved. Of the species formerly abundant, but now dead as 

 regards the British Islands, the most familiar are the bear, the beaver, 

 the pig and the wolf. 



1. The Beak as a British species died about 1041. In what is now 

 called London, namely the districts of Southwark, Lambeth, Baltersea, 

 Westminster, Fleet, Hackney, Woodford, Plaistow, Stratford, Isle of 

 Dogs, Greenwich, Peckham and Camberwell, bears were so numerous 

 at the period of the Roman invasion that hunting-parties were syste- 

 matically organized and armed, to diminish their numbers, and thus in 

 some degree abate the nuisance : to compass their destruction was out 

 of the question : nor perhaps was it altogether desired, for we may 

 imagine that the preservation of bears, although a loss to the many, 

 may have been a source of profit to the few, since we find that about 

 the year 850 the Emperor Claudius imported vast numbers of British 

 bears as a source of gratification to his subjects ; they were large, 

 strong and ferocious, and were highly prized for their prowess in the 

 arena. Seven hundred years later, bears are incidentally mentioned as 

 infesting English forests in great numbers ; but no mention is made of 



