nd
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