THE ESKIMO CURLEW AND ITS DISAPPEARANCE. 



By Myron H. Swenk. 



[With 1 plate.] 



It is now the consensus of opinion of all informed ornithologists 

 that the Eskimo curlew {Numenius horealis) is at the A'erge of ex- 

 tinction, and by many the belief is entertained that the few scattered 

 birds which may still exist will never enable the species to recoup its 

 numbers, but that it is even now practically a bird of the past. And, 

 judging from all analogous cases, it must be confessed that this 

 hopeless belief would seem to be justified, and the history of the 

 Eskimo curlew, like that of the passenger pigeon, may simply be 

 another of those ornithological tragedies enacted during the last half 

 of the nineteenth centur}^, when because of a wholly unreasonable 

 and uncontrolled slaughter of our North American bird life several 

 species passed from an abundance manifested by flocks of enormous 

 size to a state of practical or complete annihilation. In this deadly 

 work the people of Nebraska, as well as those of our neighboring 

 States, to our lasting discredit played a conspicuous and all too effec- 

 tive part each spring, while in the fall the equally profligate gunners 

 of New England and the Atlantic States poured leaden death into 

 southbound flocks of these unfortunate birds whenever an oppor- 

 tunity presented itself. 



Nothing was known concerning this interesting bird until after 

 the middle of the eighteenth century. It was original!}^ described 

 by Forster- in 1772 as Scolopax horealis, from a specimen taken 

 at Albany Fort, Hudson Bay. Pennant ^ in 1785 and Hearne* in 

 1795 both erroneously referred to the larger congener of this bird, 

 the Hudsonian curlew {Numenius kudsonicus) as the " Eskimaux 



1 Reprinted by permission, after revision by the author, from the Proceedings of the 

 Nebraslia Ornithologists' Union, vol. 6, pt. 2, Feb. 27, 1915. 



2 Forster, J. R. Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. London, 62, pp. 411 and 431, 1772. 

 s Pennant, T. Arctic Zoology, 2, 1785. 



* Heame, S. A journey from Prince of Wales' Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern 

 Ocean, 1795. 



325 



