250 The Progress of Zoology . 



life, enlarged immensely the geographical limits and the physi- 

 cal conditions known to be favourable to the production of 

 animal life. In that still lower department of the Infusoria, the 

 magnificent work of Pritchard offers another example of the 

 splitting up of old divisional arrangements through the accumu- 

 lation of facts indicative of distinctive characteristics. The 

 publication of a fourth edition of this work, combining the 

 labours of Arlidge, Archer, Ralfs, Williamson, and Pritchard, 

 with the magical delineations by Mr. Tuffen West,* is a suffi- 

 cient proof that natural histoiy nourishes in Britain, and that 

 the objects least attractive to the popular eye are acquiring a 

 popularity, such as to assure us that the cultivation of science is 

 almost universally shared in by the intelligent classes of this 

 country. But when we get among desmids and diatoms we 

 have almost done with zoology, and we may take advantage of 

 this extremity to offer a few remarks on the higher forms of 

 the vetebrata. 



If we are astonished at the abundance of life on the globe, 

 and can sympathize with Dr. Livingstone's remark, that it 

 " seems like a mantle of happy existence encircling the world," 

 it is also pretty certain that some of its forms are fast passing 

 away from us, and that not very far in the future the zoologist 

 will pay as much attention to mammals recently extinct, as 

 we do to certain fossil forms, because they fill up gaps in our 

 classified system of transitions. That the dodo is utterly extinct 

 there can be no reasonable doubt, for the region it inhabited 

 has not only been thoroughly explored, but is now densely 

 populated. The kiwi or apteryx is fast going in the same 

 direction, and as the interior of New Zealand becomes a home for 

 the white man, that and other feras must of necessity disappear. 

 The last dinornis has probably long since perished ; yet it could 

 not be long since there were at least eight species of dinornis, 

 varying in size from that of the bustard upwards, _D. gigan- 

 teus being vastly superior to the ostrich in magnitude. The 

 great quadrumana will probably be the next to disappear, for 

 civilization will not tolerate the existence of anthropoid apes, 

 and the mere savagery of what is called " sport" will extinguish 

 them. The gorilla evidently occupies but a limited range of 

 country, and that near the coast, and the tendency of civilization is 

 to people the coasts everywhere with colonies of Anglo-Saxons, 

 French, and Portuguese, respecting whom it is not easy to say 

 which are the most active in the destruction of indigenous 

 fauna. The beaver still holds a few secluded weirs in the 

 North of Europe, but no one can say when it became extinct 

 in Britain. The otter is so scarce in this country that the sport 



* A History of Infusoria, inch' ding the Desmidiace.e and Diatomacece. By 

 Andrew Pritchard. Loudon : Whitlaker and Co. 



