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