lively animation. Diving, splashing, wheeling about, disappearing, emerging, some with pendant crests, others with glancing eyes, all reflecting a thousand changeful hues in the rays of the wintry or the vernal sun, they afford a spectacle which is outrivalled only in magnitude by the most fashionable ball-room in Europe. It is on this principle of general, instead of particular inclosure, that the aquatic birds in St. James's Park are brought to such a wonderful degree of familiarity and apparent domestication. Nothing astonishes a country visitor more than to see the almost indiscriminate tameness of the specimens congregated there. But the pinioning knife has not been idle; even the webbed feet of some have been curtailed of their propulsive powers; and the roar and traffic of the vast Babel around them, keeps them to their islets, smoke-dried though they be, more effectually than the most impervious fence that was ever yet contrived. THE WHITE CHINA GOOSE. ὦ Ηράκλεις, τουτὶ τί ποτ ̓ ἐστὶ θηρίον ; ARISTOPHANES. (The Birds.) Euelpides. "Great Hercules! Why, what a monster's here, CAREY'S Translation, Act I., Scene iii. 66 "EVERY like is not the same," is a principle that is beginning more and more to influence the reasonings of zoologists, and to affect their conclusions with respect to wild animals. The important deductions derived from minute differences, in creatures that are almost in juxtaposition together, both systematically and locally, may be seen in the late "Voyage of the Beagle round the World," and in the " Quarterly Review" on Broderip's Zoological Recreations" (March, 1848). But with Domesticated Animals a diametrically opposite axiom would seem to hold; they are described and catalogued apparently on the rule that "Things may be unlike, and yet the same." The many different kinds of Fowl are supposed to be varieties by which, I presume, is meant transmutable, or at least transmuted forms-of one or, at most, two or three wild originals; and the history of the Domestic Goose is quietly settled by considering it as the result of a fusion of three or four different species melted and mixed into one. Believe it!-those who think that the Bernicle Goose originates from a worm engendered in the sea from rotten wood-not I. Perhaps these Essays may cause the real truth to be more closely investigated. If, within the last half-dozen years, three different sorts (I abstain from using a stricter word) of China Geese, identical with those with which we are acquainted, had been discovered in three adjacent islands of the Indian Archipelago, they would probably have been formed into a separate genus, say Cygnöides, or better, Ederamphus, of which the species might be, first, albus, or galeatissimus, as typical; the next rufipes, and the third, perhaps, bæticus, retaining, though in a different sense, one of its trivial names. We should have as a generic character, "forehead surmounted with a large knob, partly fleshy and partly osseous, increasing with age; beak powerful, highly ridged, adapted to the digging up and division of roots and tubers, to which purpose it is often applied ;"—they make short work with a potato "habits, more terrestrial than aquatic; attitudes, in the water graceful and swanlike, on land constrained and usually erect; voice, harsh and loud; powers of flight very limited and weak," and so on; then would follow the specific distinctions. Now, we will further suppose that a stock of each of these species was either brought to England, or retained in domestication on the neighbouring Asiatic continent, or both; that the islands became thickly peopled, or repeatedly visited by mariners armed with fowling-pieces, and anxious for fresh meat, and also for sport. The birds cannot escape by flight, nor by running away; they can neither swim so swiftly nor dive so far as to baffle a boat and a crew of stout rowers; they make no attempt to conceal themselves, as a common Hen will if she be hunted in a shrubbery; their loud cries betray them when unseen; and, consequently, in their native home, they undergo the fate of the Dodo: they are exterminated. But their aptitude for domestication has preserved the race they survive in our poultry yards, artificial lakes, and Zoological Gardens,* and, after a while, they are styled "Accedit ad nonnullorum animantium, et earum rerum, quas terra gignit, conservationem, et salutem, hominum etiam sollertia, et diligentia. Nam multæ et pecudes, et stirpes sunt, quæ sine procuratione hominum salvæ esse non possunt."-CICERO, De Naturá Deorum, II. "The forethought and industry of Man assists in the preservation and safety of not a few animals, and those things which the earth pro varieties of, nobody indeed knows what. If they had refused to propagate in captivity, they would have become extinct, like the Uri of the Hercynian forest.* Is this an impossible or even an unlikely case? Where are we now to find a wild Cereopsis? Where will our great-grandchildren be able to find a Wild Turkey a hundred years hence ? But before finally determining to fix the appellation of species, or variety, to any particular race of animals, it will be necessary first to settle the question of what is meant by the terms Genus, Species, and Variety. They are all understood to denote certain degrees of difference, that are made use of to assist in classification; but the precise lines of demarcation of each are extremely difficult to define. It is generally assumed that individuals of different genera will refuse to breed together; that the mules between different species are sterile; and that varieties are merely accidental and recent examples of a slight alteration in the external character of species, which do not affect their continuance as a race, and, perhaps, disappear altogether after a time. But in opposition to this, hybrids have been produced between the Egyptian Goose and the Penguin Duck, also between the common Fowl and the Guinea-fowl; prolific mules are constantly occurring between all sorts of species of Geese; and it is well and practically known, that though varieties breed freely with each other, nothing is so difficult as to establish a cross that shall be a perfect amalgamation of two distinct varieties. Even individual peculiarities are reproduced in the course of generations.† duces. For there are many, both of beasts and plants, that could not continue in existence, if deprived of the protection of Man." *"Sed adsuescere ad homines, et mansuefieri, ne parvuli quidem excepti possunt (Uri).”—CÆSAR de Bello Gallico, lib. ii. cap. 28. "But not even when taken very small can the Uri be reconciled to the presence of Man, and become tame." Some breeders of great experience firmly maintain that white Peafowl are not a mere accidental variety of the common kind, but are a distinct sort; asserting that the cases, in which white birds are produced In truth, species and varieties differ only in degree. If we admit that the latter are merely recent changes of organisation, we cannot refuse to allow that the former are so likewise; and thence proceeding backwards, we must apply the same view to Genera and Classes, till we arrive at last at the theory of the development of all animated beings from Monads, as advocated by Lamarck, and more recently by the author of the " Vestiges of Creation." This is one mode of explaining the diversity of Nature; the other is by supposing that animals were originally created as we now see them, and that any apparent gaps in the chain or network are caused by the extinction of certain races, not by the uprising of new forms into existence, since the Creation of Man, at least. Now we have indisputable proof of the extinction of very many Genera and Species of innumerable Pre-Adamite animals (and the reader is particularly requested to observe that we have now existing amongst us many Pre-Adamite animals,*-the Common Badger, for instance, of older from coloured parents, are only a breaking out of mixed blood, the "crying back," in fact, to a cross some generations back. The white Pea-fowl are certainly of inferior size, and in their proportions bear more resemblance to the Japan breed than to the true Pavo cristatus. "Remains of the Aurochs (a species which still survives by virtue of strict protective laws, in extensive forests, which form part of the Russian empire), are found in the superficial deposits of various parts of Europe, some of which carry the antiquity of the Aurochs as far back as the extinct Pachyderms of the newer pliocene deposits. "That the present European Beaver is not the degenerate descendant of the great Trogontherium, is proved, not only by the differences in the dental structure, pointed out in the preceding section, but likewise by the fact that Beavers, in no respect differing in size or anatomical characters from the Castor Europaeus of the present day, co-existed with the Trogontherium. Remains of the Beaver have been thus discovered by Mr. Green in the same fossilised condition, and under circumstances indicative of equal antiquity with the extinct Mammoth, in the lacustrine formation at Bacton, in Norfolk. "A fossil skull of a Badger in the Museum of the Philosophical Institution at York, would seem to carry the antiquity of the Meles taxus to a higher point than the Cave epoch, and as far back as any species of the Ursine genus has been traced. Should this specimen |