EXTIRPATION OF BIRDS. 
95 
Nature sets bounds to the disproportionate increase of 
birds, while at the same time, by the multitude of their re¬ 
sources, she secures them from extinction through her owm 
spontaneous agencies. Man both preys upon them and wan¬ 
tonly destroys them. The delicious flavor of game birds, and 
the skill implied in the various arts of the sportsman who 
devotes himself to fowling, make them favorite objects of the 
chase, while the beauty of their plumage, as a military and 
feminine decoration, threatens to involve the sacrifice of the 
last survivor of many once numerous species. Thus far, but 
few birds described by ancient or modern naturalists are 
known to have become absolutely extinct, though there are 
some cases in which they are ascertained to have utterly disap¬ 
peared from the face of the earth in very recent times. The 
most familiar instances are those of the dodo, a large bird 
peculiar to the Mauritius or Isle of France, exterminated about 
the year 1690, and now known only by two or three fragments 
of skeletons, and the solitary, which inhabited the islands of 
Bourbon and Bodriguez, but has not been seen for more than 
a century. A parrot and some other birds of the Norfolk 
Island group are said to have lately become extinct. The 
wingless auk, Alca impennis , a bird remarkable for its exces¬ 
sive fatness, was very abundant two or three hundred years 
ago in the Faroe Islands, and on the whole Scandinavian sea¬ 
board. The early voyagers found either the same or a closely 
allied species, in immense numbers, on all the coasts and isl¬ 
ands of Newfoundland. The value of its flesh and its oil made 
it one of the most important resources of the inhabitants of 
those sterile regions, and it was naturally an object of keen 
pursuit. It is supposed to be now completely extinct, and few 
museums can show even its skeleton. 
There seems to be strong reason to believe that our boasted 
modern civilization is guiltless of one or two sins of extermina¬ 
tion which have been committed in recent ages. New Zea¬ 
land formerly possessed three species of dinornis, one of 
which, called moa by the islanders, was much larger than the 
ostrich. The condition in which the bones of these birds have 
