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forests. This right was acknowledged, also, in Scandinavia a. By an edict of William the First, however, all bucks, does, hares, rabbits, martins, foxes, partridges, rails, and quails, became the property of the sovereign: also mallards, herons, pheasants, woodcocks, and swans. The right of killing these animals was, however, frequently delegated to others, who had chases, parks, and free warrens. The exclusive right of fishing in public rivers, too, once belonged to all those monarchs in Europe, whose authority was founded on the feudal system.

The right of fishing in England was first granted in the reign of King John; and it was still further extended in those of Henry the Third, and Richard the First. The laws, respecting animals, have been modified from time to time; but they are still in many points exceedingly oppressive, and a never-failing source of altercation and disquiet. That a possessor of land should have no property in the animal, he feeds, is surely an anomaly in the science of legislation! In England, where game is preserved with so much care, expense, litigation, and angry feeling, privileged birds are comparatively scarce; whereas in Bohemia, where the peasantry are less restricted, they are very abundant.

Whether the elephant was ever known in America was, for some time, a subject of reasonable doubt; the fossil bones, dug up in Peru and the Brazils, being in too imperfect a state of preservation for the comparative anatomist decidedly to identify them with the bones of the elephant of Africa and Asia. But whatever may be the fact, certain it is, that since Europe has succeeded in planting America with exotic seeds,

a Stiernhook de Jure Sueon. lib. ii. c. 8. In a sporting party of the Emperor Francis the First, in 1755, there were killed, in the space of eighteen days, 10 foxes, 19 stags, 77 roebucks, and 18,243 hares; 114 larks, 353 quails, 9,499 pheasants, and 19,545 partridges.-Dutens. There were twenty-three persons of the party, three of whom were ladies; and the number of shots fired were 116,209; of which the emperor fired 9,798, and the Princess Charlotte of Lorrain 9,010.

and in peopling it with exotic animals, it would be one of the best returns, that Spain and Portugal could make for past frauds, pillages, and murders, were they to introduce the elephant and the camel into such points of soil and latitude as would ensure the ultimate naturalisation of animals, still more useful in tropical countries, than even the lama or the pacos.

In the time of Polybius, there were no wild animals in Corsica. In that island the cattle, which grazed in the woods, quitted them at the call of the shepherd; and even swine were trained to such obedience, that they would separate from any drove, which they chanced to mingle with, at the sound of a horn. In the Isle of Cyprus, deer, wild boars, roebucks, and a beautiful species of pheasant, were once extremely abundant. They are now nowhere to be seen in that island. The white pelican formerly inhabited Russia; and the flamingo, once familiar to the shores of Europe, are now seldom seen, except in America. That black swans were formerly seen in Europe or Asia, is evident from a line in Ovid, declaring their unfrequency: for had he never heard of one, he would no more have thought of mentioning a black swan, than a yellow nightingale.

d

The Canary Islands derived their ancient name from the multitude of their dogs: and the Spaniards named the Azores from the number of their hawks. Both animals are now greatly diminished in those islands.

Grouse are not so common in Europe as formerly: and the cock of the wood seldom delights the sportsman, even in the Highlands of Scotland.

The beaver was known in Wales during the reign of Howel Dhâ; but, that it was even then rare, may be inferred from its skin being valued at a hundred-and-twenty pence. This

a Lib. xii. extr. i.

b Mariti. vol. i. 26.
d A. D. 1450.

c Plin. lib. vi. c. 32,

animal was once known in Italy, Egypt, and Persia; but it is now almost every where extirpated, except in Canada a.

Eagles were once frequent inhabitants of Snowdon and Cader Idris. On the latter it is now never seen; and on the former not once in twenty years. Deer, too, were so numerous in the forests of Snowdonia, that they were extirpated by royal authority, for the injury they did to the trees and corn. Goats, too, are become scarce in that country .

b

The opossum, once common in Antigua, is now almost extinct in that island; and the sable is no longer known in Sweden as it was in the time of Jornandes, nor is the time far distant, perhaps, when every animal, that bears fur, will be extinct on the eastern sides of the rocky mountains of North America. Bears, wolves, foxes, stags, weasels, and bush-cats, are said to be the only animals, that strictly belong to the two continents of America and Africa; while the hare, fox, bear, wolf, elk, and roebuck, are equal inhabitants of the northern parts of America, Europe, and Asia. Buffon has observed, that not one animal is common to the torrid zone of the old and new continents; and M. Latreille and M. Cuvier assert, that no quadruped, no terrestrial bird, no reptile, and no insect, are common to the equatorial regions of the two

" Beavers are known in the canton of Valois; but they, as well as Chamois, are diminishing every year. The stag was an inhabitant of the canton of Berne; but the race was extirpated during the Swiss Revolution in 1797-8.

b Greece was almost depopulated of goats, in consequence of the number sacrificed by Callimachus, Polemarch of Athens, who would sacrifice as many he-goats as were slain of Persians during the invasion of Attica; and, there not being sufficient, the Athenians sacrificed five hundred every year, for many years.

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c It is very remarkable that Pliny should assert, that no bears were ever seen in Africa. 'There are a number of authorities against him," says the Scholiast," particularly that of Herodotus, who says, of Libya, 'They have also lions among them, and elephants and bears.' And Solinus observes, that the Numidian bears excel others in beauty-' Numidici ursi forma cæteris præstant;' which seems to be the reason why Virgil dresses Acestes in the fur of a Libyan bear."

worlds. This can be allowed, however, only with exceptions. It is true the king of vultures and the armadillo are peculiar to Southern America; and the zebra is equally unknown out of Africa, where it is seen to frequent districts, so widely apart as Congo, Ethiopia, and the neighbourhood of the Cape. It is true, also, that the antelope is a stranger in America, and that the humming bird has never been seen in Africa; but the Bush-cat of Whyda is the Agousti of Brazil; and the plaintive note of Whip-poor-will charms the wanderer on the banks of the Congo, as well as on those of the Oronoko. The Tapir was also supposed to be confined to the new world; but a new species of it was discovered in 1819, in Malacca, and the forests of the Malay Peninsula. It is also said to be a native of Sumatra; but exceedingly scarce".

OF FABULOUS AND EXTINCT ANIMALS.

IN New Holland and New South Wales there are some animals entirely peculiar. It is true, the water-mole is known* there; and eels, herons, widgeons, plovers, and pigeons: quails, wild turkeys, bustards, and pelicans. But they have all distinguishing characteristics. In the interior, there is a species of pigeon, seen no where else. On its head it wears a black plume; the back part of its head is of a flesh colour ; its wings are streaked with black; the breast is fawn-coloured; its eyes are red; and its downy feathers golden, edged with white. In that country, too, is the black swan, and the ornithorynchus paradoxus, the male of which has spurs like a

a It is described in Asiatic Researches, vol. xiii. p. 418, 4to. The rump, back, belly, sides, and tips of the ears, are white; every other part black.

b In the Museum of Natural History at Paris, is a specimen of a swan having a black neck and white body. It was sent from Brazil by Mons. Hilaire. The black swan is now familiarised to the European naturalist. I once saw a curious battle between a black swan, and two white ones which had attacked it, in the Regent's Park: they killed it-Oct. 1827. For an account of this battle, see Arcana of Science, 1828, p. 98.

cock. It is oviparous; but it belongs, strictly, neither to the class of birds, beasts, nor fishes.

A few observations may be now introduced, relative to fabulous and extinct animals. Of the former are the centaura, the minotaur, the phoenix ", the griffin, the pegasus,

a

Pliny believed in the existence of this monster.(Nat. Hist. vii. c. 3.)—He says he actually saw one embalmed in honey. And another is said to have been found on a mountain in Arabia, which the king sent to Cæsar, when in Egypt. It died from change of climate. Cæsar had it embalmed; and it was sent to Rome and exhibited.

The earliest account of the phoenix is given by Herodotus; and this has been copied by Pliny, Tacitus, Pomponins Mela, Mariana, and other writers : among the rest our old English writer, Bartholomew Glantville, (as translated by Trevisor, and printed in black letter by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1498) says:— "St. Ambrose, in Exameron, sayth of the humoure or ashes of fenix ariseth a newe byrde and wexeth, and, in space of tyme, he is clothed with fethers and wyngis, and restored into the kind of a byrde, and is the most fairest byrde that is most like to the pecock in fethers, and loveth wilderness, and gadereth his meate of cleane greenes and fruites. Alanus speketh of this byrde, and saith, that whan the hyghest byshop Onyas had buylded a temple in the citie of Helyopolys in Egypt, to the lykeness of the temple of Jherusalem, and the fyrste daye of Easter, whaune he hadde gathered moch sweete smellyng wood, and sette it on fyre uppon the altar to offer sacrifyce, to all mennes syghte suche a byrde came sodaynely, and fell into the myddel of the fyre and was brente anone to ashes in the fyre of the sacrifyce; and the ashes abode there, and was besely kept and saved by the commandemente of the preeste; and within three dayes, of these ashes was bred a lyttel worme, that took the shape of a byrde atte the laste, and flew into the wyldernesse."

Alluded to by Eschylus in his tragedy of Prometheus :

Thus the gryphins,

Those dumb and ravenous dogs of Jove, avoid

The Arimaspian troops, whose frowning foreheads

Glare with one blazing eye.

Thus described by Servius :-" Gryphes autem, genus ferarum, in hyperboreis nascitur montibus. Omni parte, leone sunt, aliis, et facie, aquilis similes, Apolloni consecrati."-This animal was supposed to have been generated between a lion and an eagle. Some have affirmed, that the dromedary was originally the offspring of a hog and a camel. Anciently it was supposed, that the leopard sprang from a lion and a panther; the quacha from an ass and a zebra; the camelopard from a panther and a leopard, or a leopard and a camel. An origin, equally illegitimate, has been attributed to the lama, since it unites the sheep, the hog, the camel, and the stag. The ichthyosaurus, or fish-lizard of ancient times, is described as having had "the snout of a porpoise, the teeth of a cro

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