542 THE GREAT AUK. 
ineessantly at work in the organic world, the Great Auk 
departed this life, we cannot say. We know of no changes 
on our northern coast sufficient to affect the conditions neces- 
sary to the existence of this oceanic bird. It has not been 
hunted down like the Dodo and Dinornis. The numerous 
bones on the shores of Greenland, Newfoundland, Iceland 
and Norway, attest its former abundance ; but within the last 
century it has gradually become more and more scarce, and 
finally extinct. There is no better physical reason why some 
species perish than why man does not live forever. We can 
only say with Buffon, "it died out because time fought 
against it." From the Lingula prima to the Auk, genera 
have been constantly losing species, and species varieties ; 
types and links are disippearing: 
Still more mysterious than the extirpation of species, but 
equally interesting, is their coming into being. We must 
not expect this event to be conspicuous. We suppose that 
the ushering in of the puny sloth was ‘us quietly and inap- 
preciably done as the annihilation of its gigantic prototype, 
the Megatherium. We are rather pelled to believe in 
the continual formation of “incipient species” to take the 
place of those that have expired. But how? By transmu- 
tation or special creation? We will not decide; but we must 
hold to one or the other, or else believe there are far fewer 
species now than when man was added to the world's fauna. 
For how many animals which figure in Pleistocene strata are 
missing in the Recent Life! "That a renovating force, 
which has been in full operation for millions of years, should 
cease to act while the causes of extinction are still in full 
activity or even intensified by the occasion of man's de- 
 stroying penes seems to me in the highest degree im- 
probable.” + 
SSA OCDE st e 

*Lyell’s Antiquity of Man, p. 394. 

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