Let us make some inquiries into the extent of the influence which the
progress of society has exerted, during the last seven or eight centuries,
in altering the distribution of our indigenous British animals. Dr.
Fleming has prosecuted this inquiry with his usual zeal and ability, and
in a memoir on the subject has enumerated the best authenticated examples
of the decrease or extirpation of certain species during a period when our
population has made the most rapid advances. We shall offer a brief
outline of his results.
The stag, as well as the fallow-deer, and the roe, were formerly so
abundant that, according to Lesley, from five hundred to a thousand were
sometimes slain at a hunting-match; but the native races would already
have been extinguished, had they not been carefully preserved in certain
forests. The otter, the marten, and the polecat, were also in sufficient
numbers to be pursued for the sake of their fur; but they have now been
reduced within very narrow bounds. The wild cat and fox have also been
sacrificed throughout the greater part of the country, for the security of
the poultry-yard or the fold. Badgers have been expelled from nearly every
district which at former periods they inhabited.
Besides these, which have been driven out from some haunts, and everywhere
reduced in number, there are some which have been wholly extirpated; such
as the ancient breed of indigenous horses, the wild boar and the wild oxen,
of which last, however, a few remains are still preserved in the parks of
some of our nobility. The beaver, which was eagerly sought after for its
fur, had become scarce at the close of the ninth century, and, by the
twelfth century, was only to be met with, according to Giraldus de Barri,
in one river in Wales, and another in Scotland. The wolf, once so much
dreaded by our ancestors, is said to have maintained its ground in Ireland
so late as the beginning of the eighteenth century (1710,) though it had
been extirpated in Scotland thirty years before, and in England at a much
earlier period. The bear, which in Wales was regarded as a beast of the
chase equal to the hare or the boar, only perished as a native of Scotland
in the year 1057.
Many native birds of prey have also been the subjects of unremitting
persecution. The eagles, larger hawks, and ravens, have disappeared from
the more cultivated districts. The 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 isles; 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_,
"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.
These changes, we may observe, are derived from very imperfect 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 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 known 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 identy 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 _Testudu 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.
Next to the direct agency of man, his indirect influence in multiplying
the numbers of large herbivorous quadrupeds of domesticated races, may be
regarded as one of the most obviate causes of the extermination of species.
On this, and on several other grounds, the introduction of the horse, ox,
and other mammalia, into America, and their rapid propagation over that
continent within the last three centuries, is a fact of great importance
in natural history. The extraordinary herds of wild cattle and horses
which overran the plains of South America, sprang from a very few pairs
first carried over by the Spaniards; and they prove that the wide
geographical range of large species in great continents does not
necessarily imply that they have existed there from remote periods.
Humboldt observes, in his Travels, on the authority of Azara, that it is
believed there exist, in the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, twelve million cows
and three million horses, without comprising in this enumeration the
cattle that have no acknowledged proprietor. In the Llanos of Caraccas,
the rich hateros, or proprietors of pastoral farms, are entirely ignorant
of the number of cattle they possess. The young are branded with a mark
peculiar to each herd, and some of the most wealthy owners mark as many as
fourteen thousand a year. In the northern plains, from the Orinoco to the
lake of Maracaybo, M. Depons reckoned that one million two hundred
thousand oxen, one hundred and eighty thousand horses, and ninety thousand
mules, wandered at large. In some parts of the valley of the Mississippi,
especially in the country of the Osage Indians, wild horses are immensely
numerous.
The establishment of black cattle in America dates from Columbus's second
voyage to St. Domingo. They there multiplied rapidly; and that island
presently became a kind of nursery from which these animals were
successively transported to various parts of the continental coast, and
from thence into the interior. Notwithstanding these numerous exportations,
in twenty-seven years after the discovery of the island, herds of four
thousand head, as we learn from Oviedo, were not uncommon, and there were
even some that amounted to eight thousand. In 1587, the number of hides
exported from St. Domingo alone, according to Acosta's report, was
thirty-five thousand four hundred and forty-four; and in the same year
there were exported sixty-four thousand three hundred and fifty from the
ports of New Spain. This was in the sixty-fifth year after the taking of
Mexico, previous to which event the Spaniards, who came into that country,
had not been able to engage in any thing else than war. All our readers
are aware that these animals are now established throughout the American
continent, from Canada to Paraguay.
The ass has thriven very generally in the New World; and we learn from
Ulloa, that in Quito they ran wild, and multiplied in amazing numbers, so
as to become a nuisance. They grazed together in herds, and, when attacked,
defended themselves with their mouths. If a horse happened to stray into
the places where they fed, they all fell upon him, and did not cease
biting and kicking till they left him dead.
The first hogs were carried to America by Columbus, and established in the
island of St. Domingo the year following its discovery in November, 1493.
In succeeding years they were introduced into other places where the
Spaniards settled; and, in the space of half a century, they were found
established in the New World, from the latitude of 25 deg. north, to the
40th deg. of south latitude. Sheep, also, and goats have multiplied
enormously in the New World, as have also the cat and the rat, which last,
as we before stated, has been imported unintentionally in ships. The dogs
introduced by man, which have at different periods become wild in America,
hunted in packs like the wolf and the jackal, destroying not only hogs,
but the calves and foals of the wild cattle and horses.
Ulloa in his voyage, and Buffon on the authority of old writers, relate a
fact which illustrates very clearly the principle before explained by us,
of the check which the increase of one animal necessarily offers to that
of another. The Spaniards had introduced goats into the island of Juan
Fernandez, where they became so prolific as to furnish the pirates who
infested those seas with provisions. In order to cut off this resource
from the bucaneers, a number of dogs were turned loose into the island;
and so numerous did they become in their turn, that they destroyed the
goats in every accessible part, after which the number of the wild dogs
again decreased.
As an example of the rapidity with which a large tract may become peopled
by the offspring of a single pair of quadrupeds, we may mention that in
the year 1773, thirteen rein-deer were exported from Norway, only three of
which reached Iceland. These were turned loose into the mountains of
Guldbringe Syssel, where they multiplied so greatly, in the course of
forty years, that it was not uncommon to meet with herds consisting of
from forty to one hundred in various districts.--_Lyell's Geology_, vol.
ii.
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