The Catholic World Volume I Part 77

ANGEL.

It is because Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear.

Thou hast forestalled the agony, and so For thee the bitterness of death is pa.s.sed Also, because already in thy soul The judgment is begun. That day of doom, One and the same for the collected world-- That solemn consummation for all flesh, Is, in the case of each, antic.i.p.ate Upon his death; and, as the last great day In the particular judgment is rehea.r.s.ed, So now too, ere thou comest to the throne, A presage falls upon thee, as a ray Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot.

That calm and joy uprising in thy soul Is first-fruit to thee of thy recompense, And heaven begun.

-- 4.

SOUL.

But hark! upon my sense Comes a fierce hubbub, which would make me fear, Could I be frighted.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

{526}

From The St. James Magazine

EXTINCT SPECIES

The study of geology teaches us that our planet, has undergone many successive physical revolutions, the crust of it being made up of layer upon layer, after the manner of the successive peels of an onion. Each of these successive depositions const.i.tutes the tomb of animal forms that have lived and pa.s.sed away. Now it is a fresh-water or a marine sh.e.l.l that the exploratory geologist discloses; now the skeleton, or parts of a skeleton, from the evidence of which a comparative anatomist can reproduce, by model or picture, the exact forms. Occasionally science has to build up her presentment of animals that were, from the scanty evidence of their mere footfalls. As the poacher is guided to the timid hare, crouching in her seat, by the vestiges of her footprints on the snow, so the geologist can in many cases arrive at tolerably certain conclusions relative to the size and aspect of an extinct animal by the evidence of footsteps on now solid rock. And if it be demanded how it happens that now solid rocks can bear the traces of such soft impressions, the reply is simple. There evidently was a time when these rocks, now so hard and solid, were mere agglomerations of plastic matter, comparable for consistence to ordinary clay. It needs not even the weight of a footfall to impress material of temper so soft as this. The plashes of rain are distinctly visible upon many rocks now hard, and which have only acquired their consistence with the lapse of countless ages.

The geologist's notion of the word "recent" comprehends a span of time of beginning so remote that the oldest records of human history fade to insignificance by comparison. Since this world of ours acquired its final surface settlement, so to speak, numerous species have become extinct. The process of exhaustion has gone steadily on. It has been determined by various causes, some readily explicable, others involved in doubt. It is a matter well established, for example, that all northern Asia was at one time, not geologically remote, overrun by herds of mammoth creatures which, as to size, dwarf the largest elephants now existing; and which, among other points distinguis.h.i.+ng them from modern elephants, were, unlike these, covered by a crop of long hair. Very much of the ivory manufactured in Russia consists of the tusks of these now extinct mammoths, untombed from time to time.

Tilesius declares his belief that mammoth skeletons still left in northern Russia exceed in number all the elephants now existing upon the globe. Doubtless the process of mammoth extinction was very gradual, and extended over an enormous s.p.a.ce of time. This circ.u.mstance is indicated by the varying condition in which the tusks and teeth are found. Whereas the gelatine, or soft animal matter, of many specimens remains, imparting one of the characteristics necessary to the being of ivory, other specimens have lost this material, and mineral substances, infiltrating, have taken its place. The gem turquoise is pretty generally conceded to be nothing else than the fossilized tooth of some extinct animal--probably the mammoth.

Curiosity of speculation prompts the mind to imagine to itself the time when the last of these gigantic animals succ.u.mbed to influences that were finally destined to sweep them all from the earth. Had men come upon the scene when they roamed their native wilds? Were those wilds the same as now as to climate and vegetable growths? {527} Testimony is mute. Time silently unveils the sepulchred remains, leaving fancy to expatiate as she will on a topic wholly beyond the scope of mortal intelligence.

Inasmuch as bones and tusks of the mammoth are dug up in enormous quant.i.ties over tracts now almost bare of trees, and scanty as to other vegetation, certain naturalists have a.s.sumed that in times coeval with mammoth or mastodonic life the vegetation of these regions must have been richer than now, otherwise how could such troops of enormous beasts have gained their sustenance?

On this point Sir Charles Lyell bids us not to be too confident affirmatively. He remarks that luxuriance of vegetable growth is not seen at the time being to correspond with the prevalence of the a.s.sociated fauna. The northern island of the New Zealand group, at the period when Europeans first set foot there, was mostly covered by a luxuriant growth of forest trees, of shrubs and gra.s.ses. Admirably adapted to the being of herbivorous animals, the land was wholly devoid of the same. Brazilian forests offer another case in ill.u.s.tration; a stronger case than the wilds of New Zealand, inasmuch as the climate may be a.s.sumed as more congenial to the development of animal life. Nowhere on earth does nature teem with an equal amount of vegetable luxuriance; yet Brazilian forests are remarkable for almost the total absence of large animals. Perhaps no present tract is so densely endowed with animal life as that of South Africa, a region where sterility is the prevailing characteristic; where forest trees are rare and other vegetation scant; where water, too, is infrequent.

Present examples, such as these, should make a naturalist hesitate before coming to the conclusion that Siberian wilds, even as now, were wholly incompatible with the existence and support of troops of mammoths or mastodons. Speculating now as to the latest time of the existence of mastodons in Siberia, a circ.u.mstance has to be noted that would seem to countenance the belief in the existence of it up to a not very remote period of historic times. In the year 1843, the season being warmer than usual, a ma.s.s of Siberian ice thawed, and, in thawing, untombed one of these animals, perfect in all respects, even to the skin and hair. The flesh of this creature furnished repast to wolves and bears, so little alteration had it undergone. Another mastodon was disentombed on the Tas, between the Obi and Yenesei, near the arctic circle, about lat. 66 30' N., with some parts of its flesh in so perfect a state that the bulb of the eye now exists preserved in the Moscow museum. Another adult carca.s.s, accompanied by an individual of the same species, was found in 1843, in lat. 75 15' N., near the river Taimyr, the flesh being decayed. a.s.sociated with it, Middendorf observed the trunk of a larch tree (_Pinus larix_), the same wood that now grows in the same neighborhood abundantly.

It is no part of our intention to discuss the causes of mammoth extinction. This result has a.s.suredly not been caused by any onslaught of the destroyer man. The Siberian wilds are scantily populated now, and it has never been suggested that at any anterior period their human denizens were more plentiful. Nature often establishes the balance of her organic life through a series of agencies so abstrusely refined, and acting, beside, over so long a period, that they altogether escape man's cognizance. The believer in the G.o.d of nature's adaptation of means to ends will see no reason to make an exception in animal species to what is demonstrated by examples in so many other cases to be a general law. The dogma, that no general law is without exceptions, though one to which implicit credence has been given, may nevertheless be devoid of the universality commonly imputed. On the contrary, the application of this dogma may extend over a very narrow field; may be only referable to the codifications, artificial and wholly {528} conventional, which mankind for their convenience establish, and under a false impression elevate to the position of laws. If logical proof in syllogistic form be demanded as to the proposition that laws established by nature have no exceptions, the fulfilment of demand would not be possible; inasmuch as human reason is too impotent for grasping, and too restricted in its energies for investigating, the multifarious issues which the discussion of such a thesis would involve. As coming events, however, are said by the poet to cast their shadows in advance, so, as heralds and harbingers of truths beyond logical proof, come beliefs, faiths, even moral convictions. Of this sort is the a.s.surance of the balance established by nature at each pa.s.sing epoch of being in the world.

The naturalist is impressed with the firm belief that the number of animal species existing on the earth, and the number of individuals in each species, are balanced and apportioned in some way and by some mysterious co-relation to the needs of the universe.

Some presumptive testimony in favor of this belief is afforded by the discussion, barely yet concluded, relative to the effect of small bird destruction. Without any more elaborate reasoning on this topic than follows necessarily as the result of newspaper reading, the general concession will be made by any one of unbiased mind, that if small bird destruction could be enacted to its exhaustive limits--if every small bird could be destroyed--the aggregate of vitality thus disposed of would be balanced through the increase of other organisms.

Insect life would teem and multiply to an extent proportionate with the removal of an anterior restraining cause.

The nature of the topic on which we are engaged does not force upon us the question whether such proportionate increase of insect life be advantageous or disadvantageous. What we are wholly concerned in placing in evidence is the balance kept up between vital organisms of different species by nature. Nor is the balance of vitality established between different animal species. It also may be traced, and even more distinctly, between the vegetable and animal kingdoms; each regarded in its entirety. Vegetables can only grow by the a.s.similation of an element (carbon) which animals evolve by respiration, as being a poison. Consideration of this fact well-nigh forces the conclusion upon the mind--if, indeed, the conclusion be not inevitable--that if through any vast cataclysm animated life were to become suddenly extinct throughout the world, vegetable life would languish until the last traces of atmospheric carbon had become exhausted, and then perish.

In maintenance of her vital balance through the operation of some occult law, it often happens that animals that have ceased to be "obviously useful," as taking part in a general economy around them, are seen to die out. Whilst wolves and elks roamed over Ireland the magnificent Irish wolf-dog was common. With the disappearance of wolves the breed of wolf-dogs languished, and has ultimately become extinct. As a matter of zoological curiosity many an Irish gentleman would have desired to perpetuate this gigantic and interesting race of dogs; but the operation, the tendency to vital equilibrium has been over-strong to be contravened--the race of Irish wolf-dogs has fleeted away. Speaking now of the huge Siberian mammoths, from which we diverged, of these faith in nature's balanced adaptation a.s.sures us that they died out so soon as they ceased to be necessary as a compensation to some unknown force in the vital economy.

Spans and periods of time, such as those comprehended by the human mind, and compared with the normal period of individual human existence, dwindle to nothingness when attempted to be made the units of measurement in calculations involving the duration of species.

Perhaps the data are not available for enabling the most careful investigator to come to an approximate {529} conclusion as to the number of years that must elapse before the race of existing elephants, African and Indian, will become extinct, departing from the earth as mammoths have departed. The time, however, must inevitably arrive for that consummation under the rule of the present course of things.

Without forest for shade and sustenance the race of wild elephants cannot exist; and, inasmuch as elephants never breed in captivity, each tame elephant having been once reclaimed from the forests, it follows, from the consideration of inevitable results, that sooner or later, but some day, nevertheless, one of two possible issues must be consummated--either that man shall cease to go on subduing the earth, cutting down forests and bringing the land into cultivation, or else elephants must become extinct. Who can entertain a doubt as to the alternative issue? Man has gone on conquering and to conquer from the time he came upon the scene. Animals, save those he can domesticate, have gone on fleeting and fleeting away. It is most probable, nevertheless, that one proportionate aggregate of vitality has at every period been maintained.

The most marked examples of the pa.s.sing away of animal species within periods of time, in some cases not very remote, p.r.o.nounced of even in a historical sense, is seen in the record of certain gigantic birds.

The largest individuals of the feathered tribes now extant are ostriches; but the time was when these plumed denizens of the Sahara were small indeed by comparison with existing species. Some idea of the bulk of the epiornis--an extinct species--may be gathered from a comparison of the bulk of one of its eggs with that of other birds.

According to M. Isidore Geoffroy, who some time since presented one of these eggs to the French Academy of Sciences, the capacity of it was no less than eight litres and three-fourths. This would prove it to be about six times the size of the ostrich's egg, 148 times that of an ordinary fowl, and no less than 50,000 times the size of the egg of the humming-bird. The egg exhibited was one of very few that have been discovered; hence nothing tends to the belief that it was one of the largest. The first knowledge of the existence of this gigantic bird was acquired in 1851. The sole remains of the species. .h.i.therto found are some egg-sh.e.l.ls and a few bones. These suffice, however, for an ideal reproduction of the creature under the synthetical treatment of comparative anatomy. The epiornis inhabited Madagascar. The creature's height could not have been less than from nine to twelve feet, and the preservation of its remains is such as to warrant the belief in its comparatively recent existence.

Of a structure as large as the epiornis, probably larger, though differing from the latter in certain anatomical particulars, according to the belief of Professor Owen, is a certain New Zealand giant bird, called by him the dinornis. As in the case of the Madagascar bird, the evidence relating to this is very recent. Some few years ago an English gentleman received from a relative settled in New Zealand some fragments of large bones that had belonged to some creature of species undetermined. He sent them to Professor Owen for examination, and was not a little surprised at the a.s.surance that the bones in question, although seemingly having belonged to an animal as large as an ox, were actually those of a bird. The comparative anatomist was guided in coming to this conclusion by a certain cancellated structure possessed by the bony fragments, a characteristic of the bones of birds. For a time Professor Owen's dictum was received with hesitation, not to say disbelief, on the part of some people. The subsequent finding of more remains, eggs as well as bones, soon justified the naturalist's verdict, however. Not the slightest doubt remains now upon the mind of any zoologist relative to the past existence of the dinornis; nay, the {530} impression prevails that this feathered monster may be living in some of the more inaccessible parts of the southern island of New Zealand at the present time. Be that as it may, the dinornis can only have become extinct recently, even using this word in a historical sense, as the following testimony will make manifest:--

A sort of mummification prevailed amongst the Maories until Christianity had gained ground amongst them. The process was not exactly similar to that by which Egyptian mummies were formed, but resembled it, nevertheless, in the particular of desiccation. Smoking was the exact process followed; and smoked Maori heads are common enough in naturalists' museums. In a general way Maori heads alone were smoked, certain principles of food economy prompting a more utilitarian treatment for entire bodies. Nevertheless, as a mark of particular respect to some important chief now and then, affectionate survivors exempted his corpse from the oven, and smoking it entire, set it up amongst the Maori lares and penates as an ornament. This explanation is not altogether _par parenthese_, for it brings me to the point of narrating some evidence favorable to the opinion that the dinornis cannot have been extinct in New Zealand even at a recent historical period. Not long ago the body of a Maori was found in a certain remote crypt, and resting on one hand was an egg of this bird giant. Contemplate now the bearings of the testimony. The Maori race is not indigenous to New Zealand, but arrived there by migration from Hawai. Not alone do the records of the two groups of Pacific islands in question advert to such migration, but certain radical coincidences of language lend confirmation. It is further a matter of tradition that the migration took place about three hundred years ago. Now, even if the recently discovered specimen of Maori mummy art had been executed on the very first advent of the race, the period elapsed would be, historically speaking, recent. The laws of chance, however, are adverse to any such a.s.sumption; and, moreover, the degree of civilization--if the expression may be used--implied by the dedication of an entire human body to an aesthetic purpose, instead of devoting it to one of common utility--could only have been achieved after a certain lapse of time.

According to Professor Owen, there must have been many species of dinornis. The largest individuals of one species, according to him, could not have been less than four yards high. According to the same naturalist, moreover, these birds were not remarkable by their size alone; they had, he avers, certain peculiarities of form establis.h.i.+ng a link between them and the ca.s.sowary and apteryx: the latter a curious bird still found in New Zealand, but very rare nevertheless.

Of colossal dimensions as were the dinornis and epiornis, the size of both sinks into insignificance by comparison with another giant bird, traces of which, and only traces, are discoverable in North America, at the epoch when the deposit of the conchylian stage of Ma.s.sachusetts was yet soft enough to yield under the feet of creatures stepping upon its surface. Footsteps, indeed, are the only traces left of these giant birds, and they are found side by side with the imprints of drops of rain which fell on the yielding surface in those early times.

Mostly the footmarks only correspond with three toes, but occasionally there are traces of a fourth--a toe comparable to a thumb, only directed forward, not backward. Marks of claws are occasionally found.

Every trace and lineament of the Ma.s.sachusetts bird is marvellously exceptional. The feet must have been no less than fifteen inches long, without reckoning the hinder claw, the length of which alone is two inches. The width must have been ten inches. The intervals between these footmarks correspond evidently with the stride of the monster, which got over the ground by covering successive stages of from {531} four to five feet! When we consider that the stride of an ostrich is no more than from ten to twelve inches, the application of this record will be obvious. Here closes the testimony already revealed in respect of this bird, except we also refer to it--which is apocryphal--certain coprolites or excrement.i.tious matters found in the same formation.

For the preceding facts naturalists are indebted to the investigations of Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k. The evidence adduced leaves no place for doubt as to the previous existence of a giant bird to which the traces are referable. Naturalists, however, were slow to come to this conclusion; so extraordinary did it seem that a bird should have lived at a period so remote as that when these geological formations were deposited. To gain some idea of the antiquity of that formation, one has only to remember that the conchylian stage is only the fifth in the order of time of the twenty-eight stages of which, according to Alcide D'Orbigny, the crust of the earth is made up, from the period of primitive rocks to the present date. However, many recent facts have tended to prove that several animals, mammalians and saurians amongst others, are far more ancient than had been imagined; after which evidence these giant bird footprints have lost much of the improbability which once seemed to attach to them.

Pa.s.s we on now to the traces of another very curious bird, the existence of which has been demonstrated by Professor Owen, according to whom the creature must have lived at the epoch of the schists of Sobenhofen. The name given by Professor Owen to this curious extinct bird is _archeopterix_. Its peculiarities are so numerous that for some time naturalists doubted whether it should be considered a reptile or a bird; between which two there exist numerous points of similarity. And now, whilst dealing with bird-giants, it would be wrong not to make some reference to a discovery made in 1855, at Bas Meudon, of certain osseous remains, referable to a bird that must have attained the dimensions of a horse; that floated on water like a swan, and poised itself at roost upon one leg. Monsieur Constant Prevost, the naturalist who has most studied the bird, gave to it the name of gastornis Parisiensis. The bony remains of this creature were found in the tertiary formation in a conglomerate a.s.sociated with chalk, which refers the gastornis to a date more remote than any yet accorded to any other bird.

From a bare record of facts contemplate we now our planet as it must have been when inhabited by the monstrous birds and reptiles and quadrupeds which preceded the advent of man. These were times when animated forms attained dimensions which are now wholly exceptional.

That may be described as the age when physical and physiological forces were dominant, as the force of moral agency dominates over the present, and is destined, as appearances tend to prove, to rule even more fully hereafter. Might it not seem that in nature an economy is recognizable similar to the economy of human existence? Can we not recognize an antagonism between the development of brute force and of the quality of mind? Would it not even seem that nature could not at one and the same time develop mental and corporeal giants? The physiological reign has only declined to prepare the advent of moral ascendancy. Giant bodies seem fading from the earth, and giant spirits commencing to rule. Humanity is progressive; is not its progression made manifest by these zoological revelations? The first bone traces of human beings range back to an epoch posterior to the monstrous quadrupeds entombed in the diluvium. Hereafter giants, probably, will only be seen in the moral world, grosser corporeal giant forms having become extinct. The physical gigantesque is not yet indeed banished from the earth, but the period of its {532} banishment would seem to be at hand.

The probability is that all the great birds to which reference has been made were, like the ostrich, incapable of flight. This defect, when contemplated from the point of view suggested by modern cla.s.sifications, seems one of the most remarkable aberrations of nature of which we have cognizance. For a bird to be deprived of what seems the most essential characteristic of bird-life--to be banished from the region that we have come to regard as the special domain of bird-life--bound to the earth, forced to mingle with quadrupeds--seems to the mind the completest of all possible departures from established type.

Thoughts such as these result from our artificial systems and cla.s.sifications. Apart from these, the conditions of giant walking birds that were, and to a limited extent are, will be found to harmonize well with surrounding conditions. Suppose we take the case of the ostrich for example; this bird being the chief living representative of giant bird-life remaining to us from the past. In the ostrich, then, do we view a creature so perfectly adapted to conditions which surround it that no need falls short and no quality is in excess. A complete bird in most anatomical characteristics, it borrows others from another type. The sum of the vital elements which normally, had the ostrich been like flying birds, should have gone to endow the wings, has been directed toward the legs and feet, and thereupon concentrated. Bird qualities and beast qualities have mingled, and, as we now perceive, have harmonized. If to the ostrich flying is denied--if it can only travel on foot, yet is it an excellent pedestrian. A quality of which it has been deprived we now find to have been trans.m.u.ted into another quality--the ostrich has found its equivalent.

Reflecting thus, we cease to pity the ostrich; we begin to see that nature has been supremely wise, our cla.s.sifications only having led us into error. A new thought dawns upon our apprehension; instead of longer regarding the ostrich as furnis.h.i.+ng an example of nature's bird-creative power gone astray, we come to look upon this creature as designed upon the type of ordinary walking animals, and having some bird characteristics added. a.s.suredly this point of view is better than the other; for whereas the first reveals nature to us through the distorting medium of an abstraction, the other shows us nature herself. It is not a matter of complete certainty that the bird-type, as naturalists explain and define it in their systems, exists; but there can be no doubt as to the existence of the ostrich. In this mode of expression there is nothing paradoxical; and doubtless, when we come to reflect upon it, the case will not fail to seem a little strange that we are so commonly in the habit of testing the inequalities of beings by reference to systems, instead of following the opposite course, viz., that of testing the value and completeness of systems by reference to the qualities of individuals they embrace.

Naturalists invent a system and make it their touchstone of truth; whereas the real touchstone would be the creature systematized. The ostrich simply goes to prove that the zoological types imagined by naturalists are endowed with less of the absolute than philosophers in their pride of science had imagined. Animal types are not the strangers to each other that artificial cla.s.sifications would make them appear.

Nor is flexibility of bird-type only manifested by the examples wherein a bird acquires characteristics of quadrupeds and other walking animals. Wings may even become metamorphosed into a sort of fins, thus establis.h.i.+ng a connection between bird-life and fish-life.

This occurs in the manchot, a bird not less aquatic in its habits than the seal--of flying and walking almost equally incapable--a bird the natural locomotive condition of which is to be plunged {533} in water up to the neck. a.s.suredly nothing can be more absurd than the attempt to recognize, in these ambiguous organizations, so many attempts of nature to pa.s.s from one type to another.

No matter what religious system one may have adopted, or what philosophical code: the interpretation of nature (according to which she is represented as making essays--trying experiments) is alike inadmissible. Neither G.o.d omniscient, nor nature infallible, can be a.s.sumed by the philosopher as trying experiments. There are, indeed, no essays in nature but degrees--transitions. Wherefore these transitions? is a question that brings philosophy to bay, and demonstrates her weakness. It is a question that cannot be pondered too deeply. Therein lies the germ of some great mystery.

Reverting to bird-giants, past and present, it is a.s.suredly incorrect to a.s.sume, as certain naturalists have a.s.sumed, that flying would have been incompatible with their bulk. There exist birds of prey, of whose bodies the specific gravity does not differ much from that of the ostrich, and are powerful in flight nevertheless. Then another cla.s.s of facts rises up in opposition to the hypothesis, that mere grandeur of dimensions is the limit to winged flying. Neither the apteryx nor the manchot fly any more than the ostrich. Neither is a large bird, nor, relatively to size, a heavy bird. As regards the epiornis, the position is not universally acceded to by naturalists that the creature was like the ostrich, the apteryx, and ca.s.sowary, a mere walking bird. An Italian naturalist, Signor Bianconi, has noted a certain peculiarity in the metatarsal bones of the creature which induces him to refer it to the category of winged birds of prey. If this hypothesis be tenable, then a sort of giant vulture the epiornis would have been: one in whose imposing presence the condor of the Andes would have dwindled to the dimensions of a buzzard. Further, if Signor Bianconi's a.s.sumption hold good, then may we not have done amiss in banis.h.i.+ng the "roc" to the realms of fiction? Old Marco Polo, writing in the thirteenth century, described the roc circ.u.mstantially, and the account has been long considered as either a fiction or a mistake. Signor Bianconi, coming to the rescue of his fellow-countryman, thinks that the Italian traveller may have actually described a giant bird of prey extant at the time when he wrote, but which has now become extinct.

A notice of extinct birds would be incomplete without reference to the dodo, the very existence of which had been lately questioned; so completely has it fleeted away from the earth. Messrs. Broderip, Strickland, and Melville, however, have amply vindicated the dodo's claim to be regarded a former denizen of the world we live in. The dodo was first seen by the Dutch when they landed on the Isle of France, at that time uninhabited, immediately subsequent to the doubling of Cape Horn by the Portuguese. These birds were described as having no wings, but in the place of them three or four black feathers. Where the tail should be, there grew instead four or five curling plumes of a grayish color. In their stomachs they were said to have commonly a stone as big as a fist, and hard as the gray Bentemer stone. The boat's crew of the _Jacob Van Neck_ called them Walgh-vogels (surfeit birds), because they could not cook them or make them tender, or because they were able to get so many turtle-doves, which had a much more pleasant flavor, so that they took a disgust to these birds. Likewise, it is said that three or four of these birds were enough to afford a whole s.h.i.+p's company one full meal. Indeed, the sailors salted down some of them, and carried them on the voyage.

Many descriptions of the dodo were given by naturalists after the commencement of the seventeenth century; and the British Museum contains a painting said to have been copied {534} from a living individual. Underneath the painting is a leg still finely preserved; and in respect of this leg naturalists are agreed that it cannot belong to any existing species. The dodo must have been a curious bird, if Mr. Strickland's notion of him be correct; and Professor Reinhardt, of Copenhagen, holds a similar opinion. The dodo, these naturalists affirm, was a vulture-like dove--a sort of ugly giant pigeon--but with beak and claws like a vulture. He had companions or neighbors, at least, not dissimilar in nature. Thus a bird called the solitaire inhabited the small island of Roderigues, three hundred miles east of the Mauritius. Man has exterminated the solitaire, as well as other birds nearly allied, formerly denizens of the Isle of Bourbon.

The dodo will be seen no more; the race has fleeted away. Among birds, the emeu, the ca.s.sowary, and the apteryx are species rapidly vanis.h.i.+ng; amongst quadrupeds, the kangaroo--the platypus: others slowly, but not less surely. After a while they will be gone from the earth wholly, as bears, wolves, mammoths, and hyenas have gone from our own island. The _Bos primigenius_, or great wild bull, was common in Germany when Julius Caesar flourished. The race has become wholly extinct, if, indeed, not incorporated with the breed of large tame oxen of northern Europe. The urus would have become extinct but for the care taken by Russian emperors to preserve a remnant in Lithuanian forests. The beaver built his mud huts along the Saone and Rhone up to the last few generations of man; and when Hannibal pa.s.sed through Gaul on his way to Italy, beavers in Gaul were common. Thus have animals migrated or died out, pa.s.sed away, but the balance of life has been preserved. Man has gone on conquering: now exterminating, now subjecting. Save the fishes of the sea and the birds of the air, the time will perhaps come when creatures will have to choose between subjection and death. Ostriches would seem to be reserved for the first alternative, seeing that in South Africa, in southern France, and Italy, these birds have lately been bred, domiciled into tame fowls, in behalf of their feathers. Very profitable would ostrich farming seem to be. These giant birds want no food but gra.s.s, and the yearly feather yield of each adult ostrich realizes about twenty-five pounds sterling.

{535}

From Chambers's Journal.

A DINNER BY MISTAKE.