232 LOST AND VANISHING BIRDS 



been largely due to uncivilised man. Dr. Stejneger 

 was told by the natives of Bering Island that the 

 flesh of this Cormorant was exceptionally palatable, 

 and that during the winter, when other meat was 

 scarce, it formed an article of food more highly 

 prized than any of the other Cormorants frequent- 

 ing the place. It is far from improbable that this 

 noble-looking Cormorant at some distant period 

 occupied the other Aleutian Islands, where it may 

 have been slowly hunted to extinction by the 

 native tribes of those remote regions. From its 

 great size it must have been eagerly sought, for 

 Steller informs us that a single bird — weighing 

 from twelve to fourteen pounds — was suflBcient for 

 three of his starving shipwrecked crew. In a 

 somewhat extensive deposit of bones of various 

 mammals and birds on the north-western extremity 

 of Bering Island, Dr. Stejneger found — associated 

 with the bones of Arctic foxes, sea otters, sea lions, 

 and marine birds — a pelvis and other osteological 

 remains of Pallas's Cormorant ; whilst on a second 

 visit to the island in 1895, amongst additional 

 bones he obtained another pelvis and a cranium. 

 Of the habits of this Cormorant nothing what- 

 ever appears to be known. They were doubtless 

 very similar to those of better-known species of 



