EXTERMINATION 223 
was safe from the depredations of foxes and other carnivorous 
quadrupeds. This safety was, however, unavailing when man began 
yearly to visit its breeding-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 pot, a. high northern range, its fate is easily understood. 
Some +hirtyscteht specimens are computed to exist in museums. 
A very similar case is that of the largest known species of 
PHILLIP-ISLAND Parrot, Nestor productus. 
CorMoRANT, Phalacrocorax perspicillatus, which in 1882 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, Rhytina 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 species, 
