EXTERMINATION OF ANIMALS. 



185 



milder seasons intervening between the severe winters, the mammoths 

 may have recovered their numbers, and the rhinoceroses may have 

 multiplied again, — so that the repetition of such catastrophes may have 

 been indefinite. The increasing cold, and greater frequency of incle- 

 ment winters, would at least thin their numbers, — and their final 

 extirpation would be consummated by the rapid augmentation of other 

 herbivorous quadrupeds, more fitted for the new climate."* Besides 

 the mammoth {Elephas primigenus), the following animals are in the 

 list of extinct beings, of whose history nothing is known' but through 

 the medium of post-mortem examinations of their remains, — viz., the 

 mastodon, of which Cuvier supposes there were five species ; rhinoceros 

 tichorinus; rhinoceros incisivus; rhinoceros leptorhinus; megatherium; 

 megalonyx; elasmotherium ; megalosaurus; ichthyosaurus; plesio- 

 saurus; ammonitis ; together with several undescribed species of fish 

 and insects. 



Perhaps few large animals co-existent with man have become extinct, 

 with the exception of a singular species of gallinaceous bird, the dodo; 

 though probably many species of insects and other small beings, on 

 which attention has but lately been bestowed, have passed unnoticed 

 into oblivion. 



The extinction of the dodo (Didus) is supposed to have taken place 

 towards the conclusion of the seventeenth, or the commencement of the 

 eighteenth century. Its disappearance maybe ascribable to its not having 

 been able to defend itself from the attacks of those who pursued it for 

 its fleshf , in consequence of its having been incapable of flying, owing 

 to the shortness of its wings, — and unadapted for running, owing to 

 the shortness of its legs and the unwieldiness of its body. The only 

 places which it is known to have inhabited are, the isles of Bourbon, 

 Mauritius, and Roderigue. Bourbon and the Mauritius having become 

 colonised previous to Roderigue, it is conjectured to have disappeared 

 from them some time prior to its extermination in the latter place. It 

 would seem, from the circumstance of no efforts having apparently been 

 made to retain the breed in either of the countries which it inhabited, 

 and the neglect of a timely transmission of individuals, in a preserved 



* Lyell's Geology, voi. i. p. 96. 



f Herbert, an old traveller, who gives a strange description of the bird, states 

 that it was more pleasant to the eye than to the palate ; but Legaut, another old 

 traveller, in his account of the bird, as translated from the French by Mr. Thomp- 

 son, says that jt was " extremely fat, and of most excellent flavour, especially when 

 young."' — J. F. 



