This history presents many points of interest to the naturalist, the antiquary, and the historian. The paper is a plea for a wider, yet reliable, record and characterisation of these mammals and birds than we have at present. All zoologists are familiar with them, but the information consists mainly of details which none but specialists can appreciate. General readers look for more science, suggestive of habits and habitats. They wish to know something of the number of species recorded at different periods, their gradational relations, their geographical distribution, and the opinions of early observers as to them. Do their remains throw any light on their physical environments, or on man's condition at the time, as in touch with them, as influenced by them—the living among the living? In tracing the history of beast or bird, we meet with many collateral subjects of importance—such, for example, as climatal changes, alterations of surface over wide areas, links dropped out of gradational rank, and thereby the realisation of new conditions of existence by the removal of one old species or the introduction of one new species.