LIFE 



ALEXANDER WILSON. 



In looking at our present knowledge of the natural history of any 

 vast country, we generally lose sight of a very important circum- 

 stance, — the value which its early naturalists, and their sources of 

 information, should hold, in the opinions and deductions that we 

 form regarding it. Mines, as it were, of the relics of animal crea- 

 tion are daily discovered, containing forms we have never seen or 

 imagined — of whose shape and figure even the slightest tradition 

 does not exist ; and we possess later records of animals and birds, 

 whose truth we cannot substantiate, or of whose present existence 

 we can find no trace. Independent, however, of the great changes 

 which have taken place upon the surface of the earth, embracing, in 

 their convulsions, all creation, whether animate or inanimate, there 

 is one powerful existing cause, which tends sometimes to render of 

 no avail, and at other times to vary, those laws, which would regu- 

 larly influence the distribution of animal life in a natural or wild 

 state, — civilisation, and, consequent upon it, the extirpation of some, 

 and the introduction and naturalisation of other, species, to countries 

 and climates originally not their own. Of these, the former is most 

 to be dreaded. Introduction will destroy the exclusive locality; but 

 it may benefit the nations or individuals who are at the trouble and 

 expense of it; and the animals introduced being generally conducive 

 vol. I. b 



