CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE COM- 

 MANDER ISLANDS. 



Leonhard Stejneger and Frederic A. Lucas. 



(With Plates ii-iv.) 



A.— CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE HISTORY OF PALLAS' CORMORANT. 



BY 



Leonhard Stejneger, 

 Curator of the Department of Reptiles and Batrachians. 



About forty years ago the Great Auk (Plautus impennis) of the North- 

 ern Atlantic became exterminated. -A vigorous search has been made 

 for it and its remains; fabulous sums have been paid for skins and 

 eggs; and monographers, among whom some of the most prominent 

 ornithologists, have collected together the most minute facts bearing 

 upon its history, and discussed in extreme detail the number of speci- 

 mens extant as well as their individual history, so that the latest 

 account of this remarkable bird fills a quarto volume of quite respect, 

 able dimensions. There are now on record about eighty mounted 

 specimens, or skins, seventy eggs, and countless bones as being pre- 

 served in the various museums of the Old and the New World. 



Within the same period another large water bird has become extinct 

 in the North Pacific, without having as yet attracted the attention of 

 the monographers. It is so rare in collections that only four specimens 

 are known to exist in museums, while nobody is the proud possessor of 

 its eggs, and no bones had been found or preserved until I was so for- 

 tunate some years ago as to rescue a few of them. Yet, this bird was the 

 largest and handsomest of its tribe. And so little has been known of 

 it that there is not yet printed a detailed and good description of it. 

 The bird which has fared so badly is Pallas's Cormorant, or the Spec- 

 tacled Cormorant, Phalacrocorax perspicillatus Pall. 



I have recorded elsewhere (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., vi, 1883, p. 65, and 

 Bulletin U. S. Nat. Mus., No. 29, Res. Orn. Expl. Kamtsch., p. 180) my 

 reasons for considering this species extinct and the causes which led 

 to its extermination. It seems as if the very causes which terminated 

 the existence of the Great Auk worked the same result in Pallas's Cor- 

 morant, and it is even probable that if the latter, at some earlier period, 



Proceedings National Museum, Vol. XII, No. 765. 



