448 CLASS AVES. 



of importance transmitted to us relative to the history of the 

 dodo. We cannot quite agree with our illustrious author 

 in totally excluding it from a place in the " Animal King- 

 dom." The relations which we have cited concerning it. do 

 not appear to us to be so wholly unworthy of credit ; nor 

 does it seem very likely that web-footed fowls, like the pen- 

 guin and the manchot, could have been so misrepresented as 

 to be taken for the bird described as the dodo. Indeed it 

 appears rather ultra-sceptical to refuse all credence to the 

 testimony of writers like Willoughby and Ray, who seem 

 to have examined a perfect specimen of this bird, and Avhose 

 veracity and accurate judgment cannot very safely be called 

 in question on any subject on which they possessed the oppor- 

 tunity of personal investigation. 



It seems then, upon the whole, that this genus or spe- 

 cies did once exist, and that it exists no longer in those 

 countries which have been assigned as its habitation. This 

 circumstance of the extinction of an animal, in such compara- 

 tively recent times, affords some curious matter for reflection, 

 particularly in relation to the subject of extinct species in 

 general. From peculiar circumstances, or defective conforma- 

 tion, it would seem that annihilation may be the lot of some 

 species of animals, without the agency of elemental convul- 

 sions. We have ventured this opinion before, in the cases of 

 the sloth and of the whale. The former existence of the 

 bird of which we have been treating, if admitted, is con- 

 firmatory of not only the possibility, but the certainty, of 

 such a fact. We also know that, in many parts of the earth, 

 species which were formerly numerous, have long become 

 remarkably scarce, and even sometimes altogether wanting. 

 As man in his career of civilization extends his conquests 

 over nature, and appropriates every habitable spot upon the 

 globe, we may expect this to be more and more the case. 

 Animals which are useless or pernicious to him, will disap- 



