242 



THE NATURALIST. 



fortunately allowded to fail into decay, it was destroyed by the curators in 

 1755. The liead and one of the feet, however, escaped the annihilating 

 hands of the iconoclastic curators, and these, together with one other foot, 

 safely stored in the British Museum, comprise the sole known remains of a 

 creature commonly eaten within the last three hundred years. In the last 

 century, a peculiar amphibious animal frequented the eTitbouchures of the 

 Lena, Yenesei, Indigirki, and other great Siberian rivers, which is now to 

 be sought for in vain. The Mongolian Argali, or Wild Sheep, Ovis ammon, 

 inhabiting the mountain ranges of Siberia, Kamtschatka, and the higher 

 regions of the snow-clad Himalayas, is rapidly becoming extinct. The Anoa, 

 a ruminating animal of Summatra, of which only a few bones and cranial 

 fragmenta have ever reached this country, is either totally extinct or on the 

 eve of extinction. The Hook-billed Parrot of Philip's islands has completely 

 vanished from the face of the earth. Some species, the remains of which 

 have been found in the caves and alluvial mountains of central Europe, have 

 merely changed their habitat, and have entirely withdrawn from the region 

 they previously occupied. This phenomenon is not peculiarly striking, as it 

 is repeated within historical times. The deer, the beaver, the ibex, formerly 

 plentiful in Switzerland, have now entirely disappeared. The wolf is exter- 

 minated in England ; the bear is so in the greater part of Germany. On 

 casting a glance at this departure of species, it seems singular,, that most of 

 such as formerly inhabited central Europe have retreated northward ; that 

 consequently^ at the diluvial period there existed in the heart of Europe a 

 fauna, the remains of which are at present only found in the north. These 

 northern, but formerly central-European animals, include the glutton, the icebear, 

 hamster marmot, the lemming, the reindeer, the elk, the aurochs, the musk 

 ox, and the morse or walrus. Some of these species are apparently becoming 

 extinct, as the bison, Bison EuropcBus, of which there exists only a single 

 herd in a Polish forest. Others hover, as it were, on the boundary of the 

 German continent, as, for instance, the elk, which inhabits only a small por- 

 tion of the coast of the Baltic, but is found in Scandinavia, and some parts 

 of Eussia ; others have retreated to the Arctic circle, as the lemming, glutton, 

 and reindeer ; others again, now inhabit the icy mountain regions, as the 

 cha nois, nia^^mots, and ibex. Whilst among the extinct species types are 

 found, wind art at present confined to regions south of the Mediterranean, 

 as Iions,hy£8na3, a If hippopotami; we find among the departed species scarcely 

 a \ 3U -founded ins nee of a retreat to the south ; and as regards the extinct 

 speciys.. as the elepha .t, and the rhinoceros, we may conclude that they 



