96 
DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS. 
been found and the traditions of the natives concur to prove 
that, though the aborigines had probably extirpated them 
before the discovery of New Zealand by the whites, they still 
existed at a comparatively late period. The same remarks 
apply to a winged giant the eggs of which have been brought 
from Madagascar. This bird must have much exceeded the 
dimensions of the moa, at least so far as we can judge from the 
egg, which is eight times as large as the average size of the 
ostrich egg, or about one hundred and fifty times that of 
the hen. 
But though we have no evidence that man has extermi¬ 
nated many species of birds, we know that his persecutions 
have caused their disappearance from many localities where 
they once were common, and greatly diminished their num¬ 
bers in others. The cappercailzie, Tctrao urogallus , the finest 
of the grouse family, formerly abundant in Scotland, had 
become extinct in Great Britain, but has been reintroduced 
from Sweden.* The ostrich is mentioned' by all the old trav- 
* The cappercailzie, or tjader, as he is called in Sweden, is a bird of 
singular habits, and seems to want some of the protective instincts which 
secure most other wild birds from destruction. The younger Lsestadius 
frequently notices the tjader, in his very remarkable account of the Swe¬ 
dish Laplanders—a work wholly unsurpassed as a genial picture of semi¬ 
barbarian life, and not inferior in minuteness of detail to Schlatter’s 
description of the manners of the Nogai Tartars, or even to Lane’s admi¬ 
rable and exhaustive work on the Modern Egyptians. The tjader, though 
not a bird of passage, is migratory, or rather wandering in domicile, and 
appears to undertake very purposeless and absurd journeys. “When he 
flits,” says Lsestadius, “he follows a straight course, and sometimes pursues 
it quite out of the country. It is said that, in foggy weather, he sometimes 
flies out to sea, and, when tired, falls into the water and is drowned. It is 
accordingly observed that, when he flies westwardly, toward the moun¬ 
tains, he soon comes back again; but when he takes an eastwardly course, 
he returns no more, and for a long time is very scarce in Lapland. From 
this it would seem that he turns back from the bald mountains, when he 
discovers that he has strayed from his proper home, the wood ; but when 
he finds himself over the Baltic, where he cannot alight to rest and collect 
himself, he flies on until he is exhausted and falls into the sea.”_ Petrus 
L^estadius, Journal af forsta aret , etc., p. 325. 
