EXTERMINA TION 



223 



was safe from the depredations of foxes and other carnivorous 

 quadrupeds. This safety was, however, unavailing when man began 

 yearly to visit its Iweeding-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 mainland were infested by the four- 

 footed enemies just mentioned, and (unlike some of its congeners) 

 it had not a high northern range, its fate is easily understood. 

 Some t hirty-eight specimens are computed to exist in museums. "^ 

 A very similar case is that of the largest known species of 



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Phillip-Island Parrot, Nestor prochictiis. 



Cormorant, Fhalacwcorax j^o'sjncillntus, Avhich in 1S82 Dr. Stej- 

 neger learned from the natives of Bering Island in the North Pacific 

 had become extinct some thirty years before, having previously 

 been abundant there. It is said to have been killed for food, and 

 thus its fate is identical with that of its better known countryman, 

 Steller's Manatee, Rhjtina gigas. Four skins and a few bones 

 are all that remain of this fine bird. {Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. vi. p. 

 65, xii. pp. 83-94; Bull. U.S. Nat. Mus. No. 29, pp. 180, 181.) 



Another bird which became extinct about the middle of this 

 century is one of a group of Parrots (Nestor) peculiar to the New- 

 Zealand Region, and though some of its congeners still exist in the 

 less -frequented and alpine parts of that country, this sjjecies, 



