Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/753

Rh EXTIRPATED FORMS.] BIRDS 735 with DanelTs or Graah s Islands that they loaded one of their boats with their captives. All recent explorations of this inhospitable coast prove the utter vanity of the notion that the Gare-fowl is able there to find an asylum. But it was in the seas of Newfoundland that this species, known to the settlers and fishermen as the &quot; Penguin, &quot;- a corruption of the words &quot; pin-wing,&quot; was most abun dant, as a reference to Hakluyt s and similar collections of voyages will prove. In 1536, or forty years after the dis covery of the country, we find an island taking its name from the bird, and others are even now so called. English and French mariners alike resorted to these spots, driving the helpless and hapless birds on sails or planks into a boat, &quot; as many as shall lade her,&quot; and salting them for provision. The French crews, indeed, trusted so much to this supply of victual, as to take, it is said, but &quot; small store of flesh with them.&quot; This practice, we learn from Cartwright (Journal, (kc., iii. p. 55), was carried on even in 1785, and he then foresaw the speedy extirpation of the birds, which at that time had only one island left to breed upon. In 1819, Anspach reported their entire disappear ance, but it is possible that some few yet lingered. On Funk Island, their last resort, rude enclosures of stones are, or recently were, still to be seen, in which the &quot; Pin- wings &quot; were impounded before slaughter ; and a large quantity of their bones, and even natural mummies, pre served partly by the antiseptic property of the peat and partly by the icy subsoil, have been discovered. One of the last has furnished the chief materials from which the osteology of the species has been described (Trans. Zool. Soc. v. p. 317). Some 70 specimens of the bird s skin, about as many eggs, and nearly half-a-dozen more or less perfect skeletons, with detached bones of perhaps an hun dred individuals, are preserved in collections ; but even if there be any truth in the various reports of the appearance of the species since 1844 (some of which seem to rest on fairly good testimony), so that it may still survive, it is obvious that its rediscovery will most likely seal its fate. Far less commonly known, but apparently quite as cer- ! tain, is the doom of a large Duck which even fifty years FIG. 4Ji. Pied Duck (Somatfria laT&amp;gt;radora male and female. From specimens ia the British Museum. Reduced. ago was commonly found in summer about the mouth of the St Lawrence and the coast of Labrador, migrating in winter to the shores of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, New England, and perhaps further southward. For many years past, according to the best-informed American ornitho logists, not a single example has been met with in any of the markets of the United States, where formerly it was not at all uncommon at the proper season, and the last known to the writer to have lived was killed by Col. Ved- derburn in Halifax harbour in the autumn of 1852. J This bird, the Anas Idbradora of the older ornithologists, was nearly allied to the Eiders (Somateria), and like them used to breed on rocky islets, where it was safe from the depre dations of foxes and other carnivorous quadrupeds. This safety was however unavailing when man began yearly to visit its breeding-haunts, and, not content with plundering its nests, mercilessly to shoot the birds. Most of such islets are, of course, easily ransacked and depopulated. Having no asylum to turn to, for the shores of the main land were infested by the four-footed enemies just men tioned, and (unlike some of its congeners) it had not a high northern range, its fate is easily understood. No estimate has yet been made of the number of specimens existing in museums, but it is believed to be not very great. Another bird which has become extinct within the last Phillip few years is one of a group of Parrots (Nestor) peculiar to Island Parrot. Fl3. 43. Phillip-Island Parrot (Nettorpradnttits). From specimen In tLa British Museum. Reduced. the New-Zealand Subregion, and though some of its con geners still exist in the less-frequented and alpine parts of that country, this species (A&quot;, products) seems to have been confined to Phillip Island. The last known to have lived, according to information supplied to the writer by Mr Gould, was- seen by that gentleman in a cage in London about the year 1851. Not much more than a dozen speci mens are believed to exist in collections. BIRDS PARTIALLY EXTERMINATED. From Birds which have recently become altogether extinct we naturally turn to those that have of late been extirpated in certain countries though still surviving elsewhere. Several such instances are furnished by the British Islands. First there is the Crane (Grus communis) which in Turner s timo (1555) was described as breeding in our fens. Then the Spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia), said by Sir Thomas Browne 1 It is needless to observe that no one at that time had any notion of its approaching extinction.