now a circumstance of rare occurrence to meet with a single individual."
Bewick also remarks, "that they were formerly more common in this island
than at present; they are now found only in the open counties of the
south and east--in the plains of Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and some parts
of Yorkshire."[973] In the few years that have elapsed since Bewick
wrote, this bird has entirely disappeared from Wiltshire and
Dorsetshire.

These changes, it may be observed, 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.

_Extinction of the dodo._--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.[974]

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.

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 a great mass of
satisfactory evidence in favor of its recent existence has now been
collected by Mr. Broderip,[975] and by Mr. Strickland and Dr. Melville.
Mr. Strickland, agreeing with Professor Reinhardt, of Copenhagen, in
referring the dodo to the Columbidae, calls it a