SPECIES EXTINCT OR EXTIRPATED. 409 



extinction in North America during the latter part of the 

 eighteenth century, for Cartwright (July 5, 1785) says that 

 several crews of men lived all summer on Funk Island, for 

 the sole purpose of killing the birds for their feathers. He 

 says that the destruction was incredible; and that, unless the 

 practice could be stopped, the whole breed would be dimin- 

 ished to almost nothing, as Funk Island was then "" the only 

 island they had left to breed upon." 



When Prof. F. A. Lucas, to whom we owe much of our 

 knowledge of Plautus impennis, visited this island in 1887, 

 there were still standing the remains of several buildings or 

 camps, and the stone enclosures or " pounds " into which the 

 birds had been driven for slaughter, and killed with clubs. 

 Thus at their last place of refuge uncounted millions of these 

 birds went to their death. They were thrown into kettles 

 of hot water to scald them sufficiently to start the feathers 

 easily, and the fat bodies of those that had been plucked were 

 added as fuel to the fires. 



Tocque, in Newfoundland as it Was and Is, says that the 

 Great Auk was very plentiful "about seventy years ago." 

 As his book was published in 1877 the x\uk must have been 

 abundant in the earlier years of the nineteenth century. 



Mr. George A. Boardman questioned a Methodist mis- 

 sionary, who was stationed on the coast of Newfoundland not 

 far from Funk Island from 1818 until 1823, who said that he 

 saw the Penguins during his whole stay on the island.^ 



When Audubon visited Labrador, in 183'2, he was told by 

 « many persons that fishermen still called at an island off the 

 Newfoundland coast, and took great numbers of the young of 

 these birds for bait. It is probable that even then the birds 

 were nearly extinct; but Audubon states that a brother of his 

 engraver, Mr. Henry Havell caught one with a hook off New- 

 foundland. - 



Dr. J. A. Allen (1876) quotes Mr. Michael Carroll of 

 Bonavista, Newfoundland, who in early life was often a visitor 



1 Brewer, Thos. M. (Baird, Brewer and Ridgway): The Water Birda of North America, Vol. II, 

 p. 471, Mem. Mus. Comp. Zool., Vol. XIII. 



2 Audubon, J. .1.: Ornithological Biography, 1838, \n\. W , p. 316. 



