EXTERMINATION 225 
expected, that the bloodthirsty beasts make no greater impression 
upon the stock of Rabbits in New Zealand than they do in the 
mother-country, while they find an easy prey in the heedless and 
harmless members of the aboriginal Fauna, many of whom are 
incapable of flight, so that their days are assuredly numbered. 
Were these indigenous forms of an ordinary kind, their extirpation 
might be regarded with some degree of indifference; but un- 
fortunately many of them are extraordinary forms—the relics of 
perhaps the oldest Fauna now living. Opportunities for learning 
the lesson they teach have been but scant, and they are vanishing 
before our eyes ere that lesson can be learnt. Assuredly the 
scientific naturalist of another generation, especially if he be of 
New-Zealand birth, will brand with infamy the short-sighted folly, 
begotten of greed, which will have deprived him of interpreting 
some of the great secrets of Nature, while utterly failing to put an 
end to the nuisance—admittedly a great one.! 
Another noticeable case though free from the culpable blind- 
ness just recounted is that which is offered by the Sandwich 
Islands, where it appears that several of the land-birds are actually 
extinct, while many more are doomed to disappear within a very 
few years. In this instance the reasons assigned are the destruction 
of the indigenous Flora, effected directly on the lowlands by 
cultivation of sugar-canes and other plants, and on the forest- 
covered hills by the large stock of horned cattle which not only 
destroy the existing brushwood but check the growth of young 
trees to replace the elders that yet stand. Of the species of birds 
known to be extinct one, however, has met its fate from a different 
cause. This is the Mamo (DREPANIS), whose beautiful feathers, 
as elsewhere stated, have led to its extirpation; but no such cause 
can be assigned for the extinction (of which the writer is assured) 
of a plain-coloured bird like Chetoptila angustipluma, of which 
perhaps not more than three or four specimens have been 
preserved, or some other species that a recent collector has been 
unable to find. 
An instance of apparent extinction more unaccountable than 
the last named is that of the bird described and figured by Latham 
(Gen. Synops. Birds, iii. p. 172, pl. 82) under the name of White- 
winged Sandpiper, as having been found on Cook’s last voyage on 
the islands of Tahiti and Eimeo, where it seems to have been not 
uncommon. Though it has been often sought no specimen seems 
to have been obtained since, and indeed the only one known is in 
the Museum at Leyden. Placed by Bonaparte in a separate genus 
Prosobonia, it was supposed by him to belong to the Rallidx ; but 
1 The provoking part of the thing is that as shewn by Mr. Sclater (Nature 
xxxix. p. 493) there exists a way, the discovery of Mr. Rodier, at once simple, 
natural, and efficacious of reducing the Rabbit-pest. 
15 
