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Show 150 CHANGES CAUSED BY THE PROGRESS [Ch.IX. haunts of the mallard, the snipe, the redshank, and the bittern, have been drained equally with the summer dwellings of the lapwing and the curlew. But these species still linger in some portion of the British jsles; whereas the large capercailzies, or wood grouse, formerly natives of the pine-forests of Ireland and Scotland, have been destroyed within the last fifty years. The egret and the crane, which appear to have been formerly very common in Scotland, are now only occasional visitants *. The bustard (Otis tarda ), observes Graves in his British Ornithology t, "was formerly seen in the downs and heaths of various parts of our island, in flocks of forty or fifty birds; whereas it is now a circumstance of rare occurrence to meet with a single individual." Bewick also remarks, "that they were formerly more common in this island than at present; they are now found only in the open counties of the south and east, in the plains of Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and some parts of Yorkshire." In the few years that have elapsed since Bewick wrote, this bird has entirely disappeared from Wiltshire and Dorsetshire t. These changes, we may observe, are derived from very im-perfect memorials, and relate only to the larger and more conspicuous animals inhabiting a small spot on the globe; but they cannot fail to exalt our conception of the enormous revolutions which, in the course of several thousand years, the whole human species must have effected. The kangaroo and the emu are retreating rapidly before the progress of colonization in Australia; and it scarcely admits of doubt, that the general cultivation of that country must lead to the extirpation of both. The most striking example of the loss, even within the last two centuries, of a remarkable species, is that of the dodo-a bird first seen by the Dutch when they landed on the Isle of France, at that time uninhabited, immediately after the discovery of the passage to the East Indies by * Fleming, Syn. Quad., p. 295. t Vol. iii. London, 1821, ~ Land Birds, vol. i., p. 316, Ed, 1821. ,Ch. IX.] OF IIUMAN POPULATION. 151 the Cape of Good Hope. It was of a large size and singular form ; its wings short, like those of an ostrich, and wholly incapable of sustaining its heavy body even for a short flight: In its general appearance it differed from the ostrich, cassowary, or any k~own bird. Many naturalists gave figures of the dodo after the commencement of the seventeenth century, and there is a painting of it in the British Museum, which is said to have been taken from a living individual. Beneath the painting is a leg, in a fine state of preservation, which ornithologists are agreed cannot belong to any other known bird. In the museum at Oxford, also, there is a foot and a head, in an imperfect state, but M. Cuvier doubts the identity of this species with that of which the painting is preserved in London*· In spite of the most active search, during the last century, no information respecting the dodo was obtained, and some authors have gone so far as to pretend that it never existed ; but amongst a great mass of satisfactory evidence in favour of the recent existence of this species, we may mention that an assemblage of fossil bones were recently discovered, under a bed of lava, in the Isle of France, and sent to the Paris museum by M. Desjardins. They almost all belonged to a large living species of land-tortoise, called Testudo Indica, but amongst them were the head, sternum, and humerus of the dodo. M. Cuvier showed me these valuable remains in Paris, and assured me that they left no doubt in his mind that the huge bird was one of the gallinaceous tribe t. * Some have complained that inscriptions on tomb-stones convey no general information except that individuals were born and died, accidents which must happen alike to all men. But the death of a species is so 1·emarkable an event in natural history, that it deserves commemoration, and it is with no small interest that we learn, from the archives of the University of Oxford, the exact day and year when the remains of the last specimen of the dodo, which l1ad rotted itt the Ashmolean museum, were cast away. The relics, we are told, were "a Musooo subducta, annuente Vice-cancellario aliisque curatoribus, ad ea lustranda convocatis,die Januarii, gvo,, A.D., 1755." Zool.Journ,, No. 12,p. 559. 1828. t Sur quelques Osse~ensl &c. Ann. des. Sci., tome xxi., p. 103. Sept.1830. |