EXTERMINATION 
i) 
is) 
iS) 
and the coast of Labrador, migrating in winter to the shores of Nova 
Scotia, New Brunswick, New England, and perhaps further south- 
ward. There is no proof, according to the best-informed American 
ornithologists, of a single example being met with for many years past 
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 present writer to have lived was killed by Col. Wedderburn in 
ee ae —>Halifax harbour in the autumn of 1852.1 This bird, the Anas 
is, see uk, 1614, yp labradoria of the older ornithologists, was nearly allied to the EIDER- 
Duck, and like that species used to breed on rocky islets, where it 
Prep Duck, Somateria labradoria, Male and Female. 
1 It is needless to observe that no one at that time had any notion of its 
approaching extinction. The skin of this example is in Canon Tristram’s collec- 
tion, its sternum, which was figured by Rowley (Orn. Miscell. pp. 205-223), is in 
the Cambridge Museum. Mr. Dutcher (Auk, 1891, pp. 208, 211) reports three 
specimens supposed to have been obtained between 1857 and 1861; but the in- 
formation of the former owner of two of them points to an earlier time, and that 
respecting the third is somewhat vague. Still more uncertain are the rumours, 
though properly printed by him (pp. 214, 215), of examples said to have been 
obtained in 1871 and 1878, but since lost. If they could be recovered, a mistake 
would probably be found to have been made. Modern American authors profess 
their inability to explain the extirpation of this species. I have little doubt that 
the cause mentioned in the text and published by me in 1875 is the true one. 
The shooting down of nesting-birds, witnessed by Audubon when he was among 
the islands of the Labrador coast, and year by year carried on with increasing 
intensity, could produce no other result. 
