120 INTEODUCTIOIS" OF BIRDS. 



species.* Thus far, but few birds described by ancient or modern 

 naturalists are known to have become absolutely extirict, though 

 there are some cases in which they are ascertained to have utterly 

 disappeared from the face of the earth in very recent times. 

 The most famihar instances are those of the dodo^ a large bird 

 peculiar to the Mauritius or Isle of France, exterminated about 

 the year 1690 and now known only by more or less fragmentary 

 skeletons, and the solitary, which inhabited the islands of Bour- 

 bon and Kodriguez, but has not been seen for more than a cen- 

 tury. A parrot and some other birds of the Norfolk Island group 

 are said to have lately become extinct. The wingless auk, Aloa 

 irrvpennis, a bird remarkable for its excessive fatness, was very 

 abundant two or three hundred years ago in the Faroe Islands 

 and on the whole Scandinavian seaboard. The early voyagers 

 found either the same or a closely allied species, in immense num- 

 bers, on aU the coasts and islands of l!^ewfoundland. The value 



* The following is an extract from a letter written to the English Times by 

 Mr. A. Newton, of Magdalene College, Cambridge : 



" When, some years since, I drew the attention of the British Association 

 to the cruelty and evil consequences of the then prevailing fashion of ladies 

 wearing ' plumes ' of sea birds' feathers, you were good enough to notice my 

 efforts favourably, and in the ensuing Session of Parliament an Act was passed 

 whereby the mischief was effectually stopped. I therefore now solicit your 

 aid in bringing before the public a fashion quite as disastrous to the feathered 

 race, though, I regret to say, one that can not be put an end to by the same 

 simple means. Like others of my brother naturalists, I have been long aware 

 by report of the enormous sales of birds' feathers which are being constantly 

 held in London ; but the particulars of them do not, except by accident, come 

 before us. Chance has thrown in my way a catalogue, or portion of a cata. 

 logue, of one of these auctions, and its contents are such as to horrify me, for 

 I had no conception of the amount of destruction to which exotic birds are 

 condemned by fashion — an amount which can not fail speedily to extirpate 

 some of the fairest members of creation, for I must premise, for the benefit of 

 your non-ornithological readers, that it is chiefly, if not solely, at the breeding 

 season that the most beautiful, and therefore the most valuable feathers, are 



developed in birds. What I have before me is a ' First Supplement to 's 



Feather Sale of — th January, 1876 ' (I omit the name and date for obvious 

 reasons), and gives the details of lots 71 — 223, to be offered for sale on that 

 day. The second page of this document (the first being occupied by the title) 

 relates to 2,077 bundles of herons' or egrets' feathers (they go by other names 

 ' in the trade '), the weight of which I find to be given as 702 oz. How many 

 feathers may go to a bundle I can not say, but, weighing some 20 exception- 

 ally stout feathers (not herons') which happened to be at hand, I find them to 



