SEA-BIRD NUMBERS AND MAN 77 



by a dog on Guadeloupe "a few years" before 1891 (G. N. Lawrence, 

 1 891). On Dominica, Labat recorded it in 1696, and it was known 

 in 1 79 1, and recorded as "abundant" as late as ^.1858 (G. N. Lawrence, 

 1 878) . But it seems quickly to have given way in the nineteenth century, 

 for the Morne Diablotin, the petrel mountain of Dominica, was searched 

 in vain for the birds by Ober (1880), Feilden (1890) and in 191 7 by 

 Beck (Murphy, 1936). However, the diablotin reappeared on Haiti 

 (Hispaniola) in 1928 and on Dominica in 1932; and in 1938 a bird 

 was found alive in Haiti which had not long left the nest. Moreover, 

 the diablotin has been seen at sea in the present century in the triangle 

 West-Indies-Bermuda-Azores, and the survival of a small breeding- 

 population upon some Caribbean hillside is scarcely a matter of doubt; 

 it would be exciting to be the discoverer, or re-discoverer, of its present 

 breeding ground. Probably a very small population has survived 

 all through, hidden in the mountains on Dominica and on Haiti. 

 But in Jamaica, where a dark form of the petrel existed on Blue 

 Mountain, no specimen has been found on the old breeding-places 

 since some years before 1891 (W. E. D. Scott, 1891). It is probable 

 that man's introduced animals, including opossums and mongooses, 

 may bear some responsibility for the diablotin's undoubted extinction 

 in Jamaica and Guadeloupe, and extreme rarity in Haiti and Dominica. 

 But it seems clear that Man himself bears most. 



Pterodroma hasitata has wandered to the North American seaboard 

 or inland about a dozen times, as specimens from five of the United 

 States and the province of Ontario in Canada show. It has actually 

 been recorded in Britain; one was caught alive on a heath at South- 

 acre, near Swafifham in Norfolk in March or April 1850. In the British 

 list it is called 'capped petrel.' The story of the other rare petrel of the 

 West Atlantic, the cahow of Bermuda (of which two skins only exist) 

 is much the same. 



In 1603 the galleon of Diego Ramirez, a famous Spanish captain, 

 sheltered in a Bermudan anchorage in a storm, and the crew found 

 themselves among nocturnal petrels. The cahows were yelling fear- 

 fully and eating squids, and it was only after some preliminary 

 skirmishes with what some members took to be devils that the crew 

 settled down to eating, drying and storing some thousands of the fat 

 birds. Within a few years from this first known encounter Man had 

 eaten all, or nearly all, the cahows, for by 161 6 the governor of the 

 island tried to stop the killing to save the stock; but it was too late. 

 There was no indication, after 1629, that any cahows had survived. 



