20 LOST AND VANISHING BIRDS 



In all parts of the world island species have been 

 the greatest sufferers and the most easily exter- 

 minated, owing partly to the comparatively 

 limited number of individuals composing them, 

 and in a great measure to their verj'' specialised 

 and localised conditions of existence rendering 

 them acutely sensitive to any adverse influence. 

 The extinction of a great many intensely interest- 

 ing forms — in the present volume we shall confine 

 ourselves to birds alone — may be said to date from 

 that period when the early explorers were scouring 

 the seas in quest of undiscovered countries, and 

 when remote uninhabited islands were either per- 

 manently colonised or periodically visited for the 

 supplies of fresh food and water that they may 

 have chanced to furnish. In most cases the visits 

 of civilised man to these islands has had sooner or 

 later a disastrous effect upon the avifauna which 

 is or was usually peculiar to them. Man not only 

 destroyed many of these wonderful bird-types for 

 food or other purposes, but brought about their 

 gradual extirpation less directly in other ways — 

 by burning off the undergrowth or clearing the 

 forests, and by introducing various domestic or 

 predatory animals to which the peculiar, and in 

 many cases flightless birds, or their still more 



