orkshire, is still remarked, and
generally by the young scholar in a tremulous whisper.--_Literary Gazette_.

* * * * *

THE NATURALIST.

* * * * *

AGENCY OF MAN IN EXTINGUISHING OR SPREADING SPECIES.

Let us make some inquiries into the extent of the influence which the
progress of society has exerted, during the last seven or eight centuries,
in altering the distribution of our indigenous British animals. Dr.
Fleming has prosecuted this inquiry with his usual zeal and ability, and
in a memoir on the subject has enumerated the best authenticated examples
of the decrease or extirpation of certain species during a period when our
population has made the most rapid advances. We shall offer a brief
outline of his results.

The stag, as well as the fallow-deer, and the roe, were formerly so
abundant that, according to Lesley, from five hundred to a thousand were
sometimes slain at a hunting-match; but the native races would already
have been extinguished, had they not been carefully preserved in certain
forests. The otter, the marten, and the polecat, were also in sufficient
numbers to be pursued for the sake of their fur; but they have now been
reduced within very narrow bounds. The wild cat and fox have also been
sacrificed throughout the greater part of the country, for the security of
the poultry-yard or the fold. Badgers have been expelled from nearly every
district which at former periods they inhabited.

Besides these, which have been driven out from some haunts, and everywhere
reduced in number, there are some which have been wholly extirpated; such
as the ancient breed of indigenous horses, the wild boar and the wild oxen,
of which last, however, a few remains are still preserved in the parks of
some of our nobility. The beaver, which was eagerly sought after for its
fur, had become scarce at the close of the ninth century, and, by the
twelfth century, was only to be met with, according to Giraldus de Barri,
in one river in Wales, and another in Scotland. The wolf, once so much
dreaded by our ancestors, is said to have maintained its ground in Ireland
so late as the beginning of the eighteenth century (1710,) though it had
been extirpated in Scotland thirty years before, and in England at a much
earlier period. The bear, which in Wales was regarded as a beast of the
chase equal to the hare or the boar, only perished as a native of Scotla