The Progress of Zoology. 25 L 



of hunting it is almost obsolete, yet it is only thirty years since 

 the finest otter ever seen in Britain was shot at Walthamstow, 

 on the borders of Epping Forest, where it may still be seen in 

 a very fair state of preservation. Of the Falcomdch there are few 

 living examples left in these islands, and the eyrie of an eagle is 

 as rare in England as the nest of a thrush in France, where the 

 most melodious of songsters is valued only for its flavour in a 

 pasty by a people who make great pretensions to the culture 

 of the sentimental. The noble blackcock and the ignoble 

 black rat appear to have vanished almost simultaneously from 

 the British fauna, and the fox is probably following the wolf in 

 full conviction that its mission is accomplished. Indeed the 

 fiercest war maintained by man against animal races, is waged 

 against the carnivora and the raptorial birds. In the Biblical nar- 

 rative there are numerous evidences of the abundance of beasts of 

 prey in Palestine and Phoenicia, where there is now scarce any- 

 thing more rapacious than a fox to be found. David's adven- 

 ture with the lion and bear could not now be repeated by any 

 brave shepherd within a hundred miles of Jerusalem, and the 

 traveller on the Euphrates and Tigris need entertain but little 

 fear of those hungry lions which figure so conspicuously on the 

 hunting freizes of Nineveh. Man not only lays the whole 

 animal kingdom under tribute to furnish him with meat and 

 labour, and entertainment and knowledge, but he busies himself 

 to disturb the balances, and the gamekeepers of this country 

 might be collectively described as destroyers of the British 

 fauna. The relations of Sir Emerson Tennent and Dr. Living- 

 stone make it pretty evident that the " half-reasoning elephant" 

 is fast passing from the face of the earth to be numbered 

 among the extinct animals by the naturalists of a century hence. 

 When we read of the wanton slaughter of thousands of elephants, 

 with no object but the gratification of the passion for destruc- 

 tion, we are tempted to lament that man possesses such com- 

 plete dominion to subjugate, and such unlimited power to 

 destroy. " Had the motive," says Sir Emerson Tennent, Ci that 

 invites to the destruction of the elephant in Africa and India 

 prevailed in Ceylon, that is, had the elephants there been pro- 

 vided with tiisks, they would long since have been annihilated 

 for the sake of their ivory. But it is a curious fact that, whilst 

 in Africa and India both sexes have tusks, with some slight 

 disproportion in the size of those of the females, not one 

 elephant in a hundred is found with tusks in Ceylon, and the 

 few that possess them are exclusively males.'"* In Africa the 

 hunger for meat and ivory causes the destruction of the elephant 

 to an extent which threatens soon to extinguish the large- eared 



* Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon, tvith Narratives and Anecdotes 

 &c. &c. By Sir J. Emerson Tennent, K.C.B., LL.D., &c. Longmans and Co. 



