I. THE EXTINCT. (continued 2)

It is probable that this race extended widely over Europe, and even into Asia. Herodotus mentions Macedonian wild oxen, with exceedingly large (ὑπερμεγαθια) horns; and Philip of Macedon killed a wild bull in Mount Orbela, which had made great havoc, and produced much terror among the inhabitants; its spoils he hung up in the Temple of Hercules. The Assyrian artists delighted to sculpture on the royal bas-reliefs of Nineveh the conquest of the wild bull by the prowess of their Nimrod monarchs, and the figures, in their minute anatomical characters, well agree with the descriptions and remains of the European Urus. The large forest that surrounded ancient London was infested with boves sylvestres among other wild beasts, and it is probable that these were Uri. The legendary exploit of Guy, Earl of Warwick, in freeing the neighbourhood from a terrible dun cow, whether historically true or not, shews the existence of formidable wild bovines in the heart of England, and the terror they inspired among the people. The family of Turnbull, in Scotland, are traditionally said to owe their patronymic to a hero who turned a wild bull from Robert the Bruce, when it had attacked him while hunting.

What has become of the terrible Uri which lived in Europe at the commencement of the Christian era? Advancing civilisation has rooted them out, so that no living trace of them remains, unless the cream-white breed which is preserved in a semi-wild state in some of our northern parks be their representatives; or, as is not improbable, their blood may still circulate in our domestic oxen.

Yet there is no doubt of the identity of a species found abundantly in Britain in the Tertiary deposits, and named by Owen Bos primigenius, with the Urus of Cæsar. This fossil bull was as certainly contemporary in this island with the elephant, and the hyena, and the baboon, and, strange to say, with the reindeer, and the musk-ox, too—thus combining a tropical, a temperate, and an arctic fauna in our limited island at the same period! What a strange climate it must have been to suit them all!

Professor Nilsson, who has paid great attention to fossil oxen, mentions a skull of this species which must have belonged to an animal more than twelve feet in length from the nape to the root of the tail, and six feet and a half in height. Again, the skull of a cow in the British Museum, figured by Professor Owen, measures thirty inches from the crown to the tips of the jaws! What a beast must this have been! Would not the slaughter of such a "Dun Cow" as this in single combat have been an exploit worthy of a doughty earl?

That this ancient fossil bull was really contemporary with man in Scandinavia is proved by evidence which is irrespective of the question of its identity with Cæsar's Urus. For one of Professor Nilsson's specimens "bears on its back a palpable mark of a wound from a javelin. Several celebrated anatomists and physiologists, among whom," he says, "I need only mention the names of John Müller, of Berlin, and Andreas Retzius, of Stockholm, have inspected this skeleton, and are unanimous in the opinion that the hole in question upon the backbone is the consequence of a wound, which, during the life of the animal, was made by the hand of man. The animal must have been very young, probably only a calf, when it was wounded. The huntsman who cast the javelin must have stood before it. It was yet young when it died, probably not more than three or four years old."

We may, then, assume as certain that the vast Bos primigenius of Western Europe lived as a wild animal contemporaneously with man; and as almost certain (assuming its identity with the Urus) that it continued to be abundant as late as the Christian era.

The Bos frontosus is a middling-sized bovine. "Its remains," says Professor Nilsson, "are found in turf-bogs in Southern Scandinavia, and in such a state as plainly shews that they belonged to a more ancient period than that in which tame cattle existed in Sweden. This species lived in Scandinavia contemporaneously with the Bos primigenius, and the Bison Europæus.... If ever it was tamed, and thereby in the course of time contributed to form some of the tame races of cattle, it must have been the small-horned, often hornless, breed, which is to be found in the mountains of Norway, and which has a high protuberance between the setting-on of the horns above the nape."

This species occurs in a fossil state in some numbers in Ireland; it has also been found in England. It is by some supposed to be the origin of, or, at least, to have contributed blood to, the middling Highland races with high occiput, and small horns.

There is more certainty of the co-existence of the small B. longifrons with man. Some of the evidence I have already adduced. "Within a few years," says a trustworthy authority, "we have read in one of the scientific periodicals,—but have just now sought in vain for the notice,—of a quantity of bones that were dug up in some part of England, together with other remains of what seemed to be the relics of a grand feast, held probably during the Roman domination of Britain, for, if we mistake not, some Roman coins were found associated with them. There were skulls and other remains of Bos longifrons quite undistinguishable in form from the antique fossil, whether wild or domesticated, which, of course, remains a question."[55]

Professor Owen conjectures that this species may have contributed to form the present small shaggy Highland and Welsh cattle,—the kyloes and runts; and a similar breed in the northern parts of Scania may have had a similar origin.

In the Bison priscus, the fossil remains of which occur in many parts of Europe, and more sparsely in Great Britain,[56] we have an example of a noble animal, which, contemporary with all those which have been engaging our attention, survives to the present hour, but is dying out, and would have long ago been extinguished, probably, but for the fostering influence of human conservation. For the species is considered as absolutely identical with the Bison Europæus of modern zoology, the Bison or Wisent of the Germans, the Aurochs of the Prussians, the Zubr of the Poles, that formidable creature, which is maintained by the Czar in an ever-diminishing herd in the vast forests of Lithuania,[57] and which, perhaps, still lingers in the fastnesses of the Caucasus. This, the largest, or at least the most massive of all existing quadrupeds, after the great Pachyderms, roamed over Germany in some numbers as late as the era of Charlemagne. Considerably later than this it is reckoned among the German beasts of chase, for in the Niebelungen Lied, a poem of the twelfth century, it is said,

It is a formidable beast, standing six feet high at the shoulders, where it is protected by a thick and profuse mane. Specimens have been known to reach a ton in weight. It manifests an invincible repugnance to the ox.

There are several other animals of note which, like the Bison, were once common inhabitants of these islands, but have long been extinct here, though more genial circumstances have preserved their existence on the continent of Europe. Of the great Cave Bear, no evidence of its period exists, that I know of, except that which may be deduced from the commixture of its remains with those of other animals of whose recent date we have proof. But there is another kind of Bear, whose relics in a fossil state are not uncommon in the Tertiary deposits, viz., the common Black Bear (Ursus arctos) of Europe.

This savage animal must have early succumbed to man. The "Triads"[59] mention bears as living here before the Kymri came. The Roman poets knew of their existence here: Martial speaks of the robber Laureolus being exposed on the cross to the fangs of the Caledonian Bear; and Claudian alludes to British bears. The Emperor Claudius, on his return to Rome after the conquest of this island, exhibited, as trophies, combats of British bears in the arena. In the Penitential of Archbishop Egbert, said to have been compiled about A.D. 750, bears are mentioned as inhabiting the English forests, but they must have gradually become rare, for the chase-laws of Canute, at the beginning of the eleventh century, are silent about them. In Doomsday Book, we find incidental notice of this animal, for the city of Norwich is said to have been required to furnish a bear annually to Edward the Confessor, together with "six dogs for the bear,"—no doubt for baiting him. This seems to have been the latest trace on record of the bear in Britain; unless the tradition may compete with it, which states that one of the Gordon family was empowered by the king of Scotland to carry three bears' heads on his banner, as a reward for his prowess in slaying a fierce bear.

In Ireland it seems to have become extinct even yet earlier. Bede says the only ravenous animals in his day were the wolf and the fox; Donatus, who died in A.D. 840, distinctly says it was not a native of the island in his time; and Geraldus Cambrensis does not enumerate it as known in the twelfth century. Neither is it included in the ransom-beasts of Cailte's collection. Yet a native Irish name for the bear—Mathghambain—occurs in an old glossary[60] in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin; and the late Wm. Thomson says that a tradition is current of its having once been an Irish animal; and it is associated with the wolf as a native beast in the stories handed down from generation to generation to the present time.

The wolf, however, survived in both islands to a much later era. In the days of the Heptarchy it was a terrible pest; King Edgar commuted the punishment of certain offences into a requisition for a fixed number of wolves' tongues; and he converted a heavy tax on one of the Welsh princes into an annual tribute of three hundred wolves' heads. These laws continued to the time of Edward I., when the increasing scarcity of the animal doubtless caused them to fall into disuse. Mr Topham, in his Notes to Somerville's "Chase," says, that it was in the wolds of Yorkshire that a price was last set on a wolf's head. The last record of their occurring in formidable numbers in England is in 1281; but for three centuries after this, the mountains and forests of Scotland harboured them; for Hollinshed reports that in 1577 the wolves were very troublesome to the flocks of that country. Nor were they entirely destroyed out of this island till about a century afterwards, when the last wolf fell in Lochaber, by the hand of Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel. In Ireland the last wolf was slain in 1710.

Thus here we are able to lay our finger on the exact dates when a large and rapacious species of animal actually became extinct so far as the British Isles are concerned. And if the species had been confined in its geographical limits, as many other species of animals are, to one group of islands, we should know the precise date of its absolute extinction.

The Beaver was once an inhabitant of British rivers. Its remains are found in Berkshire, Cambridgeshire, Yorkshire, and elsewhere, associated with the other Mammalia of the fresh-water deposits and caves, but not in any abundance. No record of its actual existence, however, in these counties exists, nor anywhere else but in Wales and Scotland, whose mountain streams and rugged ravines afforded it shelter till after the Norman Conquest. It was very rare even then, and for a hundred years before; for the laws of Howel Dda, the Welsh king, who died in 948, in determining the value of peltry, fix the price of the beaver's skin at a hundred and twenty pence, when the skins of the stag, the wolf, the fox, and the otter, were worth only eightpence each, that of the white weasel or ermine at twelvepence, and that of the marten, at twenty-four pence. The appropriate epithet of Broad-tail (Llostllyddan) was given it by the Welsh. Giraldus Cambrensis, who travelled through Wales in 1188, gives, in his Itinerary, a short account of the beaver, but states that the river Teivy in Cardiganshire, and one other river in Scotland, were the only places in Great Britain, where it was then found. In all probability it did not long survive that century, for no subsequent notice of it as a British animal is extant. Tradition, however, still preserves the remembrance of its presence in those indelible records, names of places. "Two or three waters in the Principality," says Pennant, "still bear the name of Llyn yr afangc,—the Beaver Lake.... I have seen two of their supposed haunts: one in the stream that runs through Nant Francon; the other in the river Conwy, a few miles above Llanrwst; and both places, in all probability, had formerly been crossed by beaver-dams."

If, as naturalists of the highest eminence believe, there is specific difference between the beaver of Europe and that of America, then we may say that our species is fast passing away from the earth. A few colonies yet linger along the banks of the Danube, the Weser, the Rhone and the Euphrates, but they consist of few individuals, ever growing fewer; and the value of their fur exciting cupidity, they cannot probably resist much longer the exterminating violence of man.

The causes which led to the extinction of these animals in our islands are then obvious, and are thus playfully touched by the late James Wilson:—"The beaver might have carried on business well enough, in his own quiet way, although frequently incommoded by the love of peltry on the part of a hat-wearing people; but it is clear that no man with a small family and a few respectable farm servants, could either permit a large and hungry wolf to be continually peeping at midnight through the keyhole of the nursery, or allow a brawny bruin to snuff too frequently under the kitchen door (after having hugged the watch-dog to death) when the servant-maids were at supper. The extirpation then of at least two of these quondam British species became 'a work of necessity and mercy,' and might have been tolerated even on a Sunday, (between sermons,) especially as naturalists have it still in their power to study the habits of similar wild beasts, by no means yet extinct, in the neighbouring countries of France and Germany."[61]

Perhaps the example of recent extinction most popularly known is that of the Dodo, a very remarkable bird, which about two centuries ago existed in considerable abundance, in the isles of Mauritius, Bourbon, and Rodriguez. It was a rather large fowl, incapable of rising from the ground, by reason of the imperfect development of its wings, of massive, uncouth figure, predisposed to fatness, and noted for the sapidity of its flesh. Two skulls and two unmatched feet of this strange bird are preserved in European museums; and these shew that its nearest affinities were with the pigeon-tribe, of which we know some species of terrestrial habits, but none approaching this bird in its absolute confinement to the earth.

In the reports of numerous voyagers who visited these islands from the end of the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth, we have many accounts of the appearance and habits of this bird, evidently sketched from the life. Some of the descriptions, as also the figures by which they are illustrated, are quaint enough; as, for example, that graphic sketch hit off by old Sir Thomas Herbert, who saw the bird in his travels in 1634:—

"The Dodo," he says, "comes first to our description. Here and in Dygarrois (and nowhere else that I c^d ever see or heare of) is generated the Dodo. (A Portuguize name it is, and has reference to her simplenes) a bird which for shape and rareness might be call'd a Phœnix (wer't in Arabia); her body is round and extreame fat, her slow pace begets that corpulencie; few of them weigh lesse than fifty pound: better to the eye than the stomack: greasie appetites may perhaps commend them, but, to the indifferently curious, nourishment, but prove offensive. Let's take her picture: her visage darts forth melancholy, as sensible of nature's injurie in framing so great and massive a body to be directed by such small and complementall wings, as are unable to hoise her from the ground, serving only to prove her a bird; which otherwise might be doubted of: her head is variously drest, the one halfe hooded with downy blackish feathers; the other perfectly naked; of a whitish hue, as if a transparent lawne had covered it; her bill is very howked and bends downwards, the thrill or breathing place is in the midst of it; from which part to the end, the colour is a light greene mixt with a pale yellow; her eyes be round and small, and bright as diamonds; her cloathing is of finest downe, such as ye see in goslins; her trayne is (like a China beard) of three or foure short feythers; her legs thick, and black, and strong; her tallons or pounces sharp; her stomack fiery hot, so as stones and yron are easilie digested in it; in that and shape, not a little resembling the Africk oestriches: but so much, as for their more certain dyfference I dare to give thee (with two others) her representation."[62]

It is pretty certain that a living specimen was about the same time exhibited in England. Sir Hamon L'Estrange tells us distinctly that he saw it. His original MS. is preserved in the British Museum, and with some blanks caused by the injury of time, of no great consequence, reads as follows:—

"About 1638, as I walked London streets, I saw the picture of a strange fowl hong out upon a cloth. vas and myselfe with one or two more Gen. in company went in to see it. It was kept in a chamber, and was a greate fowle somewhat bigger than the largest Turky Cock and so legged and footed but stouter and thicker and of a more erect shape, coloured before like the breast of a yong Cock Fesan and on the back of dunn or deare coulour. The keeper called it a Dodo and in the ende of a chimney in the chamber there lay an heap of large pebble stones whereof hee gave it many in our sight, some as bigg as nutmegs and the keeper told us shee eats them conducing to digestion and though I remember not how farre the keeper was questioned therein yet I am confident that afterwards shee cast them all agayne."[63]

It is probable that this very specimen passed into the museum of Tradescant, who, in the Catalogue of "The Collection of Rarities preserved at Lambeth," dated 1656, mentions the following: "Dodar from the Island Mauritius: it is not able to flie being so bigg." Willoughby the ornithologist, a most unexceptionable testimony, says that he saw this specimen in Tradescant's museum: it is mentioned also by others;—as by Llhwyd in 1684, and by Hyde in 1700. It passed, with the rest of the Tradescant Collection, to Oxford, and thus became part of the Ashmolean Museum,—and being in a decayed condition, was ordered to be destroyed by the authorities, who had no apprehension of its value, in 1755. The skull and one foot, however, were preserved, and are still in the Museum at Oxford. Remains of the Dodo have been dug up in the Mauritius, and are in the Paris Museum, and in that of the Zoological Society of London. The bird certainly does not exist there now, nor in either of the neighbouring islands.

In the British Museum there is a fine original painting, once the property of George Edwards, the celebrated bird painter, representing the Dodo surrounded by other minor birds and reptiles. Edwards states that "it was drawn in Holland, from a living bird brought from St Maurice's Island, in the East Indies. It was the property of Sir Hans Sloane at the time of his death, and afterwards becoming my property, I deposited it in the British Museum as a great curiosity."

Professor Owen has discovered another original figure of this interesting form in Savary's painting of "Orpheus and the Beasts," at the Hague. The figure, though small, displays all the characteristic peculiarities, and agrees well with Edwards' painting, while evincing that it was copied from the living bird.

It is possible that there were two species of Dodo; which would explain certain discrepancies in the descriptions of observers. At all events we have here one, if not more, conspicuous animal absolutely extinguished within the last two hundred years.

Just about a century ago a great animal disappeared from the ocean, which, according to Owen, was contemporary with the fossil elephant and rhinoceros of Siberia and England. Steller, a Russian voyager and naturalist, discovered the creature, afterward called Stelleria by Cuvier, in Behring's Straits; a huge, unwieldy whale-like animal, one of the marine pachyderms, allied to the Manatee, but much larger, being twenty-five feet long, and twenty in circumference. Its flesh was good for food, and from its inertness and incapacity for defence, the race was extirpated in a few years. Steller first discovered the species in 1741, and the last known specimen was killed in 1768. It is believed to be quite extinct, as it has never been met with since.

Nearly a century ago, Sonnerat found in Madagascar, a curious animal, (Cheiromys,) which in structure seems to connect the monkeys with the squirrels. So rare was it there that even the natives viewed it with curiosity as an animal altogether unknown to them; and, from their exclamations of astonishment rather than from its cry, the French naturalist is said to have conferred upon it the name of Aye-aye, by which it is now known. Not a specimen, as I believe, has been seen since Sonnerat's day, so that, if not actually obliterated, the species must be on the verge of extinction.

Species are dying out in our own day. I have already cited the interesting case of the Moho, that fine Gallinule of New Zealand, of which a specimen—probably the last of its race,—was obtained by Mr Walter Mantell; and that of the Káureke, the badger-like quadruped of the same islands, which was formerly domesticated by the Maoris, but which now cannot be found.

The Samoa Isles in the Pacific recently possessed a large and handsome kind of pigeon, of richly-coloured plumage, which the natives called Manu-mea, but to which modern naturalists have given the name of Didunculus strigirostris. It was, both by structure and habit, essentially a ground pigeon, but not so exclusively but that it fed, and roosted too, according to Lieut. Walpole, among the branches of tall trees. Mr T. Peale, the naturalist of the U. S. Exploring Expedition, who first described it, informs us that according to the tradition of the natives, it once abounded; but some years ago these persons, like more civilised folks, had a strong desire to make pets of cats, and found, by means of whale-ships, opportunities of procuring a supply; but the consequence of the introduction of "pussy,"—for under this familiar old-country title were the exotic tabbies introduced—was the rapid diminution of the handsome Manu-mea. Pussy did not fancy yams and taro—the vegetable diet on which the natives regaled—and took to the woods and mountains to search for something better. There she met with the feeble-winged Didunculus scratching the soft earth for seeds, and with a purr and a mew soon scraped acquaintance with the stranger. Pussy declared she loved him well, and so she did—too well, in fact; she felt "as if she could eat him up,"—and did. The news soon spread among the tabbies that there were sweet birds in the woods, and the result is the almost total disappearance of poor Manu-mea. Like the Dodo, it has ceased to be, but at the hand of a more ignominious foe. The Samoan may truly say to his former pet, "Cecidisti, O Manu-mea, non manu meâ, sed ungue felino." So rare had the bird become, that during the stay of the Expedition only three specimens could be procured, and of these two were lost by shipwreck. I do not know whether another has been met with since. Probably they are all gone; for that was twenty years ago.

When Norfolk Island,—that tiny spot in the Southern Ocean since so stained with human crime and misery—was first discovered, its tall and teeming forests were tenanted by a remarkable Parrot with a very long and slender hooked beak, which lived upon the honey of flowers. It was named Nestor productus. When Mr Gould visited Australia in his researches into the ornithology of those antipodeal regions, he found the Nestor Parrot absolutely limited to Philip Island, a tiny satellite of Norfolk Island, whose whole circumference is not more than five miles in extent. The war of extermination had been so successful in the larger island that, with the exception of a few specimens preserved in cages, not one was believed to survive. Since then its last retreat has been harried, and Mr J. H. Gurney thus writes the dirge of the last of the Nestors:—

"I have seen the man who exterminated the Nestor productus from Philip Island, he having shot the last of that species left on the island; he informs me that they rarely made use of their wings, except when closely pressed; their mode of progression was by the upper mandible; and whenever he used to go to the island to shoot, he would invariably find them on the ground, except one, which used to be sentry on one of the lower branches of the Araucaria excelsa, and the instant any person landed, they would run to those trees and haul themselves up by the bill, and, as a matter of course, they would there remain till they were shot, or the intruder had left the island. He likewise informed me that there was a large species of hawk that used to commit great havoc amongst them, but what species it was he could not tell me."[64]

I have before mentioned that Professor Owen had recognised the species in fossil skulls from New Zealand, associated with remains of Dinornis, Palapteryx, and Notornis. Thus it appears that the long-billed Parrot is an ancient race, whose extreme decrepitude has just survived to our time;—that it first became extinct from New Zealand, then from Norfolk Island, and lastly from Philip Island. Peace to its ashes!

Mr Yarrell, in his "History of British Birds,"[65] commences his account of one of them in these words:—"The Great Auk is a very rare British Bird, and but few instances are recorded of its capture. The natives in the Orkneys informed Mr Bullock, on his tour through these islands several years ago, that only one male had made its appearance for a long time, which had regularly visited Papa Westra for several seasons. The female, which the natives call the queen of the Auks, was killed just before Mr Bullock's arrival. The king or male, Mr Bullock had the pleasure of chasing for several hours in a six-oared boat, but without being able to kill him, for though he frequently got near him, so expert was the bird in its natural element that it appeared impossible to shoot him. The rapidity with which he pursued his course under water was almost incredible. About a fortnight after Mr Bullock had left Papa Westra, this male bird was obtained and sent him, and at the sale of his collection, was purchased for the British Museum, where it is still carefully preserved."

This fine bird, which was larger than a goose, is believed to be extinct. Mr Bullock's specimen was taken in 1812; another was captured at St Kilda in 1822, another was picked up dead near Lundy Island in 1829, and yet another was taken in 1834, off the coast of Waterford.

On the north coast of Europe the bird is equally rare; not more than two or three, at the utmost, having been procured during the present century. During that period, however, it has haunted one or two breeding-rocks on the south coast of Iceland, in some abundance. In the years 1830 and 1831, as many as twenty-seven were obtained there, and from that time till 1840, about ten more. The last birds obtained on the Iceland coast were a pair, which were shot on their nest in 1844. The last taken in any locality, so far as is known, was one shot in 1848, by a peasant, on the Island of Wardoe, within the Arctic Circle.

Two centuries ago, the Great Auk was not uncommon on the shores of New England; and, off the great fishing-banks of Newfoundland, it appears to have been very abundant. "Its appearance was always hailed by the mariner approaching that desolate coast as the first indication of his having reached soundings on the fishing-banks. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries these waters, as well as the Iceland and Faroe coasts, were annually visited by hundreds of ships from England, France, Spain, Holland, and Portugal; and these ships actually were accustomed to provision themselves with the bodies and eggs of these birds, which they found breeding in myriads on the low islands off the coast of Newfoundland. Besides the fresh birds consumed by the ship's crew, many tons were salted down for further use. In the space of an hour, these old voyagers tell us, they could fill thirty boats with the birds. It was only necessary to go on shore, armed with sticks to kill as many as they chose. The birds were so stupid that they allowed themselves to be taken up, on their own proper element, by boats under sail; and it is even said that on putting out a plank it was possible to drive the Great Auks up and out of the sea into boats. On land the sailors formed low enclosures of stones, into which they drove the Penguins [or Auks], and, as they were unable to fly, kept them there enclosed till they were wanted for the table."

"In 1841, a distinguished Norwegian naturalist, (too early, alas! lost to science,) Peter Stuwitz, visited Tunk Island, or Penguin Island, lying to the east of Newfoundland. Here, on the north-west shore of the island, he found enormous heaps of bones and skeletons of the Great Auk, lying either in exposed masses or slightly covered by the earth. On this side of the island the rocks slope gradually down to the shore; and here were still standing the stone fences and enclosures into which the birds were driven for slaughter."[66]

It is just possible that the bird may yet haunt the inaccessible coast of East Greenland, but ships sailing between that country and Iceland never meet with it at sea. Nor did Graah observe it during his toilsome researches east of Cape Farewell. The numerous fishing craft that every season crowd the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador forbid the notion that it yet lingers there; for the great market-value set upon the bird and its eggs for collections would prevent its existence there from being overlooked. The numerous Polar voyages of discovery, and the annual fleets of whalers, would certainly have discovered it, if it still haunted the more northern regions. It is possible that a few isolated individuals may still survive; but it is the habit of the bird, as of most sea-fowl, to breed in society in bare seaward rocks, and the circumstance that no breeding station is known to be now frequented by the Great Auk renders it but too probable that it also must be classed among the species that were.

The interest attached to this now extinct bird has induced some correspondents of the Zoologist to attempt an enumeration of the specimens, both of the bird and of its eggs, (which from their great size, as well as from their rarity, have always had a value with collectors,) known to be preserved in cabinets. The result is that English collections contain 14 birds and 23 eggs; those of continental Europe, 11 birds and 20 eggs; the United States, 1 bird and 2 eggs:—the total being 26 birds and 45 eggs.

It would appear that the rock off the south of Iceland which was the chief breeding resort of the Great Auk, and which from that circumstance bore the name or "Geir-fulga Sker," sank to the level of the sea during a volcanic disturbance in or about the year 1830. "Such disappearance of the fit and favourable breeding-places of the Alca impennis," observes Professor Owen, "must form an important element in its decline towards extinction." One might think that there would be rocks enough left for the birds to choose a fresh station; but really we do not know what are the elements of choice in such a case: some peculiarities exist which make one particular rock to be selected by sea-fowl, when others apparently to us as suitable are quite neglected; but we do not know what they are. Possibly when Geir-fulga Sker sank, there was no other islet fit to supply the blank. Possibly, too, the submersion took place during the breeding season, drowning the eggs or young. If this was the case, it would indeed be "a heavy blow and great discouragement" to the dwindling Alcine nation.

Mr Darwin speaks of a large wolf-like Fox (Canis antarcticus) which at the time of his voyage was common to both the Falkland Islands, but absolutely confined to them. He says, "As far as I am aware, there is no other instance in any part of the world, of so small a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, possessing so large an aboriginal quadruped peculiar to itself. Their numbers have rapidly decreased; they are already banished from that half of the island which lies to the eastward of the neck of land between St Salvador Bay and Berkeley Sound. Within a very few years after these islands shall have become regularly settled, in all probability this fox will be classed with the Dodo, as an animal which has perished from the face of the earth."[67]

The Musk Ox (Ovibos moschatus), a long-haired ruminant, resembling what you would suppose a cross between a bull and a sheep might be,—formerly an inhabitant of Britain with the Elephant and the Hyena, but now found only on the polar margins of North America,—is becoming very scarce; and it is probable that before long its last representative will leave its bones with those of the lamented Franklin and his companions.

From the more perishable character of vegetable tissues we have far less data for determining the extinction of plant species; but analogy renders it highly probable that these also have died out, and are dying in a corresponding ratio with animals. I am not aware that a single example can be adduced of a plant that has certainly ceased to exist during the historic era. But Humboldt mentions a very remarkable tree in Mexico, of which it is believed only a single specimen remains in a state of nature. It is the Hand-tree (Cheirostemon platanoides), a sterculaceous plant with large plane-like leaves, and with the anthers connected together in such a manner as to resemble a hand or claw rising from the beautiful purplish-red blossoms. "There is in all the Mexican free States only one individual remaining, one single primeval stem of this wonderful genus. It is supposed not to be indigenous, but to have been planted by a king of Toluca about five hundred years ago. I found that the spot where the Arbol de las Manitas stands is 8825 feet above the level of the sea. Why is there only one tree of the kind? Whence did the kings of Toluca obtain the young tree, or the seed? It is equally enigmatical that Montezuma should not have possessed one of these trees in his botanical gardens of Huaxtepec, Chapoltepec, and Iztapalapan, which were used as late as by Philip the Second's physician, Hernandez, and of which gardens traces still remain; and it appears no less striking that the Hand-tree should not have found a place among the drawings of subjects connected with Natural History, which Nezahual Coyotl, king of Tezcuco, caused to be made half a century before the arrival of the Spaniards."

There is an example of this interesting plant growing in one of the conservatories at Kew, but I do not know whence it was obtained. It has been asserted that it grows wild in the forests of Guatemala.

Leaving plants out of consideration from lack of adequate data, we find that a considerable number of species of animals have certainly ceased to exist since man inhabited the globe. There have been, doubtless, many others that have shared the same fate, which we know nothing about. It is only within the last hundred years that we have had anything approaching to an acquaintance with the living fauna of the earth; yet, during that time some seven or eight creatures we know have been extinguished. Fully half of these,—the Auk, the Didunculus, the Notornis, and the Nestor,—within the last ten years! It would really seem as if the more complete and comprehensive an acquaintance with the animals of the world became, the more frequently this strange phenomenon of expiring species was presented to us. Perhaps it is not extravagant to suppose that—including all the invertebrate animals, the countless hosts of insects, and all the recondite forms that dwell in the recesses of the ocean—a species fades from existence every year. All the examples that have been given were either Mammalia or Birds, (the Colossochelys only excepted:) now these, though the most conspicuous and best known, are almost the least populous classes of living beings. There is no reason whatever for concluding that the law of mortality of species does not extend to all the other classes, vertebrate and invertebrate, in an equal ratio, so that my estimate will appear, I think, a very moderate one. Yet it is a startling thought, and one which the mind does not entertain without a measure of revulsion, that the passing of every century in the world's history has left its fauna minus a hundred species of animals that were denizens of the earth when it began. I was going to say "left the fauna so much poorer;" but that I am not sure of. The term would imply that the blanks are not filled up; and that, I repeat, I am not sure of. Probability would suggest that new forms are continually created to supply the lack of deceased ones; and it may be that some, at least, of the creatures ever and anon described as new to science, especially in old and well-searched regions, may be newly called into being, as well as newly discovered. It may be so, I say; I have no evidence that it is so, except the probability of analogy; we know that the rate of mortality among individuals of a species, speaking generally, is equalled by the rate of birth, and we may suppose this balance of life to be paralleled when the unit is a species, and not an individual. If the Word of God contained anything either in statement or principle contrary to such a supposition, I would not entertain it for a moment, but I do not know that it does. I do not know that it is anywhere implied that God created no more after the six days' work was done. His Sabbath-rest having been broken by the incoming of sin, we know from John v. 17, that He continued to work without interruption; and we may fairly conclude that progressive creation was included as a part of that unceasing work.

I know not whether my readers will take the same concern as I do in this subject of the dying-out of species, but to me it possesses a very peculiar interest. Death is a mysterious event, come when and how it will; and surely the departure from existence of a species, of a type of being, that has subsisted in contemporary thousands of individuals, for thousands of years, is not less imposingly mysterious than that of the individual exemplar.

We do not know with any precision what are the immediate causes of death in a species. Is there a definite limit to life imposed at first? or is this limit left, so to speak, to be determined by accidental circumstances? Perhaps both: but if the latter, what are those circumstances?

Professor Owen says:—"There are characters in land animals rendering them more obnoxious to extirpating influences, which may explain why so many of the larger species of particular groups have become extinct, whilst smaller species of equal antiquity have survived. In proportion to its bulk is the difficulty of the contest which the animal has to maintain against the surrounding agencies that are ever tending to dissolve the vital bond, and subjugate the living matter to the ordinary chemical and physical forces. Any changes, therefore, in such external agencies as a species may have been originally adapted to exist in, will militate against that existence in a degree proportionate to the size which may characterise the species. If a dry season be gradually prolonged, the large mammal will suffer from the drought sooner than the small one; if such alteration of climate affect the quantity of vegetable food, the bulky herbivore will first feel the effects of stinted nourishment; if new enemies be introduced, the large and conspicuous animal will fall a prey while the smaller kinds conceal themselves and escape. Small quadrupeds, moreover, are more prolific than large ones. Those of the bulk of the mastodons, megatheria, glyptodons, and diprotodons, are uniparous. The actual presence, therefore, of small species of animals in countries where larger species of the same natural families formerly existed, is not the consequence of degeneration—of any gradual diminution of the size—of such species, but is the result of circumstances which may be illustrated by the fable of 'the Oak and the Reed;' the smaller and feebler animals have bent and accommodated themselves to changes to which the larger species have succumbed."[68]

"We do not steadily bear in mind," remarks Mr Darwin, "how profoundly ignorant we are of the condition of existence of every animal; nor do we always remember that some check is constantly preventing the too rapid increase of every organised being left in a state of nature. The supply of food, on an average, remains constant; yet the tendency in every animal to increase by propagation is geometrical; and its surprising effects have nowhere been more astonishingly shewn, than in the case of the European animals run wild during the last few centuries in America. Every animal in a state of nature regularly breeds; yet in a species long established, any great increase in numbers is obviously impossible, and must be checked by some means. We are nevertheless seldom able with certainty to tell in any given species, at what period of life, or at what period of the year, or whether only at long intervals, the check falls; or again, what is the precise nature of the check. Hence probably it is, that we feel so little surprise at one, of two species closely allied in habits, being rare and the other abundant in the same district; or again, that one should be abundant in one district, and another, filling the same place in the economy of nature, should be abundant in a neighbouring district, differing very little in its conditions. If asked how this is, one immediately replies that it is determined by some slight difference in climate, food, or the number of enemies: yet how rarely, if ever, we can point out the precise cause and manner of action of the check! We are, therefore, driven to the conclusion that causes generally quite inappreciable by us, determine whether a given species shall be abundant or scanty in numbers.

"In the cases where we can trace the extinction of a species through man, either wholly or in one limited district, we know that it becomes rarer and rarer, and is then lost; it would be difficult to point out any just distinction between a species destroyed by man or by the increase of its natural enemies. The evidence of rarity preceding extinction, is more striking in the successive tertiary strata, as remarked by several able observers; it has often been found that a shell very common in a tertiary stratum is now most rare, and has even long been thought to be extinct. If, then, as appears probable, species first become rare and then extinct—if the too rapid increase of every species, even the most favoured, is steadily checked, as we must admit, though how and when it is hard to say—and if we see, without the smallest surprise, though unable to assign the precise reason, one species abundant, and another closely-allied species rare in the same district—why should we feel such great astonishment at the rarity being carried a step further to extinction? An action going on, on every side of us, and yet barely appreciable, might surely be carried a little further, without exciting our observation. Who could feel any great surprise at hearing that the Megalonyx was formerly rare compared with the Megatherium, or that one of the fossil Monkeys was few in number compared with one of the now living Monkeys? and yet, in this comparative rarity, we should have the plainest evidence of less favourable conditions for their existence. To admit that species generally become rare before they become extinct—to feel no surprise at the comparative rarity of one species with another, and yet to call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly when a species ceases to exist, appears to me much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the prelude of death—to feel no surprise at sickness—but when the sick man dies to wonder, and to believe that he died through violence."[69]

Geographical distribution is an important element in this question of extinction. A species that is spread over a wide region is far more likely to survive than one which is confined to a limited district; and extraneous influences acting prejudicially will exterminate a species which is confined to an island much sooner than if it had a continent to retire upon. We have seen how the Nestor Parrot became extinct in New Zealand, while it survived in Norfolk Island, because the former was colonised by the Maori race, while the latter remained in its virginity. But how quickly did the poor Parrot succumb as soon as man set his foot on Norfolk and Philip Islands! And how brief was the lease of life accorded to the Didunculus, when once the "Pussies" found their way to the little Samoa isles!

Very many islands have a fauna that is to a great extent peculiar to themselves. I know that, in Jamaica, the Humming-birds, some of the Parrots, some of the Cuckoos, most of the Pigeons, many of the smaller birds, and, I think, all of the Reptiles, are found nowhere else. Nay, more, that even the smaller islands of the Antilles have each a fauna of its own, unshared with any other land;—its own Humming-birds, its own Lizards and Snakes; its own Butterflies and Beetles, its own Spiders, its own Snails, its own Worms. How likely are some of these very limited species to become extinguished! By the increasing aggressions of clearing and cultivating man; by slight changes of level; even by electric and meteoric phenomena acting very locally. I find that, in Jamaica, many of the animals peculiar to the island are not spread over the whole surface, limited as that is, but are confined to a single small district. In some cases, the individuals are but few, even in that favoured locality; how easily we may conceive of a season drier than ordinary, or wetter than ordinary, or a flood, or a hurricane of unusual violence, or a volcanic eruption, either killing outright these few individuals, or destroying their means of living, and so indirectly destroying them by starvation. And then the species has disappeared!

The common Red Grouse, so abundantly seen during the season hanging at every poulterer's and game-dealer's shop in London, is absolutely unknown out of the British Isles. It could not live except in wide, unenclosed, uncultivated districts; so that when the period arrives that the whole of British land is enclosed and brought under cultivation, the Grouse's lease of life will expire. We owe it to our hard-worked members of Parliament to hope that this condition of things may be distant.