Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/472

442 New Zealand, its towering Ostrich-like head carried twelve feet high as it strides with ponderous gait over the limestone slopes; never again will the Dodo (Didus ineptus), rotund and ungainly, waddle through the forest glades of Mauritius; and never again will the surf-beaten rocks of Geirfuglaskér resound with the clamour of swarming multitudes of Great Auks swimming and diving in the foam, or sitting in line on the slippery ledges like regiments of gigantic Razorbills. Steller's Sea-Cow (Rhytina gigas) no longer blackens the shallows round Behring's Island, lazily browsing on the laminaria; the true Quagga (Equus quagga) no longer gallops over the spreading veldt in close-packed masses, accompanied by herds of lumbering Wildebeeste; and the American Bison, once monarch of the prairies, now finds a tardy refuge from extermination in the parks and zoological gardens of civilized man.

It has long been noticed that the first species to disappear are those of large size and limited range, being more conspicuous, and also relatively fewer in individuals than smaller and cosmopolitan forms. Thus the great Copper Butterfly (Chrysophanus dispar), once abundant in our own fenland (but in its typical form known nowhere else), has been extinct since 1860; the Solitaire of Rodriguez might still have existed had it not been a gigantic Pigeon good to eat and unable to fly; and the more than decimated White Rhinoceros might have been better represented than by a few survivors in Mashonaland and the Zululand preserves had it possessed the diminutive proportions and inhabited the mountain fastnesses of the Cape Hyrax.

Amongst the vanished Mammalia was a beautiful Antelope—the Blaauwbok (Hippotragus leucophæus)—formerly inhabiting the province of Swellendam, in Cape Colony, but since 1800 at latest utterly extinct. So early was this fine animal exterminated, and so rare are its remains in museums to-day, the most recent being of necessity over a century old, that but very little is known about it; and for every zoologist who has heard of the Blaauwbok, there are probably five hundred who have heard of the Great Auk and the Norfolk Island Parrot. The Blaauwbok stood about 40 or 45 in. high at the withers, as far as can now be ascertained; it carried a handsome pair of curved horns adorned with well-marked annulations, and terminating in sharp