A.D. White of course has a brief description of the episode. It doesn't answer
your questions, but he refers to "the encyclopedia of Ersch and Gruber and the
_Allgemeine deutsche Biographie_" for more on Beringer. I'd guess that Beringer, like
almost everyone else at the time, simply assumed that species could not be destroyed
(except, perhaps, for the Flood). The assumption that God is in the business of
maintaining the status quo is quite unbiblical but was widely held, & the eventual
acceptance of extinction was traumatic for many - Eiseley has a nice essay on this, "How
Death Became Natural", in _The Firmament of Time_.
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/