442 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



New Zealand, its towering Ostrich-like head carried twelve feet ■ 

 high as it strides with ponderous gait over the limestone slopes ; 

 never again will the Dodo (Didus ineptus), rotund and ungainly, 

 waddle through the forest glades of Mauritius ; and never again 

 will the surf-beaten rocks of Geirfuglasker resound with the 

 clamour of swarming multitudes of Great Auks swimming and 

 diving in the foam, or sitting in line on the slippery ledges 

 like regiments of gigantic Razorbills. Steller's Sea-Cow {Rhy- 

 tina gigas) no longer blackens the shallows round Behring's 

 Island, lazily browsing on the laminaria ; the true Quagga 

 {Equus quagga) no longer gallops over the spreading veldt in 

 close-packed masses, accompanied by herds of lumbering Wilde- 

 beeste ; and the American Bison, once monarch of the prairies, 

 now finds a tardy refuge from extermination in the parks and 

 zoological gardens of civilized man. 



It has long been noticed that the first species to disappear 

 are those of large size and limited range, being more conspicuous, 

 and also relatively fewer in individuals than smaller and cosmo- 

 politan forms. Thus the great Copper Butterfly (Chrysophanus 

 dispar), once abundant in our own fenland (but in its typical 

 form known nowhere else), has been extinct since 1860; the 

 Solitaire of Rodriguez might still have existed had it not been 

 a gigantic Pigeon good to eat and unable to fly ; and the more 

 than decimated White Rhinoceros might have been better repre- 

 sented than by a few survivors in Mashonaland and the Zulu- 

 land preserves had it possessed the diminutive proportions and 

 inhabited the mountain fastnesses of the Cape Hyrax. 



Amongst the vanished Mammalia was a beautiful Antelope — 

 the Blaauwbok (Hippotragus leucophceus) — formerly inhabiting 

 the province of Swellendam, in Cape Colony, but since 1800 at 

 latest utterly extinct. So early was this fine animal extermi- 

 nated, and so rare are its remains in museums to-day, the most 

 recent being of necessity over a century old, that but very little 

 is known about it ; and for every zoologist who has heard of the 

 Blaauwbok, there are probably five hundred who have heard of 

 the Great Auk and the Norfolk Island Parrot. The Blaauwbok 

 stood about 40 or 45 in. high at the withers, as far as can now 

 be ascertained ; it carried a handsome pair of curved horns 

 adorned with well-marked annulations, and terminating in sharp 



