Pennant, "still bear the name of _Llyn yr afangc_,--the Beaver Lake.... I have seen two of their supposed haunts: one in the stream that runs through Nant Francon; the other in the river Conwy, a few miles above Llanrwst; and both places, in all probability, had formerly been crossed by beaver-dams." If, as naturalists of the highest eminence believe, there is specific difference between the beaver of Europe and that of America, then we may say that our species is fast passing away from the earth. A few colonies yet linger along the banks of the Danube, the Weser, the Rhone and the Euphrates, but they consist of few individuals, ever growing fewer; and the value of their fur exciting cupidity, they cannot probably resist much longer the exterminating violence of man. The causes which led to the extinction of these animals in our islands are then obvious, and are thus playfully touched by the late James Wilson:--"The beaver might have carried on business well enough, in his own quiet way, although frequently incommoded by the love of peltry on the part of a hat-wearing people; but it is clear that no man with a small family and a few respectable farm servants, could either permit a large and hungry wolf to be continually peeping at midnight through the keyhole of the nursery, or allow a brawny bruin to snuff too frequently under the kitchen door (after having hugged the watch-dog to death) when the servant-maids were at supper. The extirpation then of at least two of these quondam British species became 'a work of necessity and mercy,' and might have been tolerated even on a Sunday, (between sermons,) especially as naturalists have it still in their power to study the habits of similar wild beasts, by no means yet extinct, in the neighbouring countries of France and Germany."[61] Perhaps the example of recent extinction most popularly known is that of the Dodo, a very remarkable bird, which about two centuries ago existed in considerable abundance, in the isles of Mauritius, Bourbon, and Rodriguez. It was a rather large fowl, incapable of rising from the ground, by reason of the imperfect development of its wings, of massive, uncouth figure, predisposed to fatness, and noted for the sapidity of its flesh. Two skulls and two unmatched feet of this strange bird are preserved in European museums; and these shew that its nearest affinities were with the pigeon-tribe, of which we know some species of terrestrial habits, but none approaching this bird in its absolute confinement to the earth. In the reports of numerous voyagers who visited these islands from the end of the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth, we have many accounts of the appearance and habits of this bird, evidently sketched from the life. Some of the descriptions, as also the figures by which they are illustrated, are quaint enough; as, for example, that graphic sketch hit off by old Sir Thomas Herbert, who saw the bird in his travels in 1634:--