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 Ph{oe}nix (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 Kaureke, 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 mea, 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.