Rapidly approaching total extinction are the several species of _Apteryx_ in the same country--remarkable birds with merely rudimentary wings: as also the _Notornis_, a large Rail--at first, and for a long time, only known in the fossil state, but of which a living specimen was secured by Mr. Walter Mantell in 1849: and the _Kapapo_ (_Strigops habroptilus_) of G. R. Gray--a strange owl-faced nocturnal ground-parrot. The _Æpyornis maximus_ was almost as large as the Moa; of this numerous fossil bones and a few eggs have been discovered, but there are not, I believe, any traditions extant among the natives of Madagascar of its having survived to a late period. The Great Auk (_Alca impennis_) is now believed to be extinct. It formerly occurred in the British Isles, but more abundantly in high latitudes; and its remains occur in great numbers on the shores of Iceland, Greenland, and Denmark, as also of Labrador and Newfoundland. [Illustration: FIG. 17.--RHYTINA STELLERI. (_After J. Fr. Brandt._)] Steller's Sea-cow (_Rhytina Stelleri_ of Cuvier) was a mammal allied to the Manatees and Dugongs; it was discovered by Behring in 1768 on a small island lying off the Kamtchatkan coast. It measured as much as from twenty-eight to thirty-five feet in length, and was soon nearly exterminated by Behring's party and other voyagers who visited the island. The last one of which there is any record was killed in 1854.[55] To the above may be added the _Didunculus_, a species of ground-pigeon peculiar to the Samoa Islands, and the _Nestor productus_, a parrot of Norfolk Island. An extended list might be prepared, from fossil evidences, of other species which were at one time associated with those I have enumerated. [Illustration: FIG. 18.--RHYTINA STELLERI. (_From "The Voyage of the 'Vega.'"_)] In conclusion, I may point out that that excellent naturalist Pliny[56] records the disappearance, in his days, of certain species formerly known. He mentions the Incendiary, the Clivia, and the Subis (species of birds), and states that there were many other birds mentioned in the Etruscan ritual, which were no longer to be found in his time. He also says that there had been a bird in Sardinia resembling the crane, and called the Gromphæna, which was no longer known even by the people of the country. _Local Extinction._ Of local extinction we may note in our own island the cases of the beaver, the bear, the wolf, the wild cattle, the elk, the wild boar, the bustard, and the capercailzie; of these the beaver survived in Wales and Scotland until the time of Giraldus Cambrensis in 1188, and Pennant notes indications of its former existence in the names of several streams and lakes in Wales. It was not uncommon throughout the greater part of Europe down to the Middle Ages.