Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/37

Rh of a great number of animals, the living representatives of which are now confined to the intertropical regions: in company with these we also find the vestiges of tropical vegetables. A moment's reflection will therefore be sufficient to convince us that these productions have nothing in common with our temperate and humid island, and we cannot associate together animals so distinct without a violation of truth. That the remains of such animals exist in the earth beneath our feet, is most unquestionable; but that they were ever the denizens of a cold, humid and sea-girt spot in the ocean, like that which now serves as a sepulchre for their bones, there is no evidence whatever to support. Such animals could not be introduced into our list, even of extinct British animals, without utterly violating all known principles of geographical distribution. If on this question hypotheses must be built, let us resort to the more probable one that the ground on which we tread was once a portion of some vast continent, scorched by a vertical sun, rather than by supposing these creatures ever to have been the inhabitants of an island, such as Great Britain at the present day, thus unnaturally associate them with others fitted by nature for a present residence amongst us.

The second question arises on the propriety of retaining among the productions of a country those of which history or tradition furnishes evidence more or less satisfactory. There is now a spirit of investigation on foot which makes sad havoc with the belief to which our fathers would have cheerfully assented. Naturalists now doubt the very existence of the Dodo, while a few years back, aye, within our memory, three distinct species were enumerated, the colour, figure and size carefully laid down, their nest and eggs described with minute and scrupulous accuracy, and their entire history detailed as fully as that of the barndoor fowl; all this was copied into the 'Encyclopedia Britannica,' a book then regarded as second only to the Scriptures in value and authority. It is therefore far safer to leave to history those animals which, abandoning their ancient haunts, have fairly entered into its province.

The third question touches the dog, the ox, the sheep, the goat, the horse, the ass, the turkey, the peacock, the pintado, the goose, the duck, and those numerous other useful animals that have accompanied man in all his enterprises, and settled around him whether he has pitched his tent in the city or the desert: these also must be rejected, because they exist not in a state of nature; they are preserved by man's especial care, and without that care they must inevitably perish, even by the hands of man himself. Could we suppose a manumission of all the domesticated animals to take place by an act of