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#rigiiml Articles. 



NOTES ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE DINORNIS, OR MOA OF 



NEW ZEALAND. 



By E. Foxton-Firby, F.A.S.L., F.R.A.S., &c. 



That certain species of animals have gradually disappeared from the 

 world of animated nature — become totally extinct, in fact — is an occurrence 

 not unknown to naturalists. It is as characteristic of modern times as it was 

 of the Pre- Adamite era. The causes of this gradual disappearance of certain 

 species of animal may he sought for not merely in the advance of civilization, 

 which has ever been inimical to the permanence of genera and species, but 

 in the outward circumstances affecting the ^''struggle for existence.''^ Instances 

 of this extinction might be adduced which have occurred not merely in 

 modern but in recent times. The Great Auk, Alca impennis, is already on 

 the verge of extinction, if not quite extinct. Although on the shores of 

 Greenland, Spitzbergen, Iceland and Denmark the bones of this bird abound, 

 it has been observed of late only on some rocky islets in the vicinity of Ice- 

 land j and one of these, which took its name, Geirfulga Sker, from the bird 

 in question, was reduced to the level of the sea by the violence of volcanic 

 agency in 1830, thus further curtailing the already too limited breeding-ground 

 of the Auk. The Dodo was a living inhabitant of the island of Mauritius, 

 in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and there is considerable rea- 

 son to suspect that a specimen was exhibited in England about 1638, When, 

 in the year 1598, the island of Mauritius was taken by the Dutch, who in 

 honour of Prince Maurice gave it its present name, the bird in question was 

 so abundant that the sailors gourmandized on the flesh to satiety, 

 as it was easily killed, and the flesh, especially the breast, was 

 considered a great delicacy. Le Strange, in his observations on Sir Thomas 

 Brown's " Vulgar Errors," speaks of a Dodo exhibited (probably in 

 an itinerant menagerie) in the streets of London about the year 1638. In 

 Tradescant's catalogue (" Musuem Tradescantianum : or a collection of rarities 

 preserved at South Lambeth," by John Tradescant, London, 1656.) We find, 

 amoig the " whole birds, Dodao, from the island Mauritius ; is not able to 

 flie, being so big." The stuffed specimen of Tradescant subsequently passed 

 into the possession of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, but, being un- 

 No. 41, Jammry 1. Q 



