84 ON PALLAS' CORMORANT STEJNEGER AND LUCAS. 



also inhabited the other Aleutian Islands, as is most likely, volcanic 

 eruptions may have played a role iu this drama as well as in that of 

 the Great Auk. True, the latter was entirely deprived of its power of 

 flight, but it is evident both from the measurements of the skins as well 

 as of those of the bones, given below, that the wings of this cormorant 

 were disproportionately small. Steller speaks of its great bulk of body 

 and its weight, which varied between twelve and fourteen pounds,* so 

 that one single bird was sufficient for three starving men of the ship- 

 wrecked crew. 



With this bulk it combined an unusual " stoliditas," but it is pretty 

 clear that this stupidity, which made them such an easy prey, was due 

 more to their slowness of locomotion on land and in the air than to any 

 special temperament or dullness of intellect. The natives of Bering 

 Island inform me that the meat of this species was particularly palata- 

 ble compared with that of its congeners, and that consequently, during 

 the long winter, when other fresh meat than that of the cormorants 

 was unobtainable, it was used as food in preference to any other. In 

 brief, all the circumstances combined to make short work at extermin- 

 ating this bird at its last refuge, for there is no evidence that it has ever 

 been found during historical times in auy other locality than Bering 

 Island. The result was that Pallas's Cormorant, which was found by 

 Steller and his shipwrecked comrades on that desolate island in 1741, 

 and which at that time — that is, before man ever visited its rocky 

 shores — occurred there in great numbers, " frequenUssimi? as Steller 

 says, became extinct in about a hundred years from its discovery. The 

 history of this bird forms an interesting parallel to that of the great 

 northern sea-cow (Rytina gigas). 



Up to 1837 or 1839 Steller seems to have been the only naturalist who 

 had seen this bird, for, although naming it in his Zoographia, all Pallas 

 knew of the species was derived from Steller's observations, whose de 

 scription he merely quotes. It is, then, safe to conclude that it was not 

 among the many water birds collected by Billings's expedition, which 

 brought home such rich spoils from the Kuriles and the Aleutian Island, 

 but which did not touch at Bering Island. In the above-mentioned 

 year Captain Belcher, with the Sulphur, visited Sitka, and was there 

 presented by Kuprianoff, the Bussiau governor, with one of the speci- 

 mens of this bird in his possession. This specimen is evidently the one 

 now iu the British Museum, while the others went to the St. Petersburg 

 Academy, from which one was again secured by the Leyden Museum. 

 Although obtained from the governor in Sitka, there is nothing to indi- 

 cate whence came the specimens; but inasmuch as Bering Island at that 

 time belonged to the administrative district of Sitka, at which port all 

 the furs were received from that island before being shipped to Europe, 



* The average length of wing of adult Ph. perspicillatus is 355 mm (see tahle beyon 1) 

 and the weight 12 to 14 pounds. Compare with this the fact recorded by me (Oni. 

 Expl. Kamtsch., p. 186) that Ph. urile, the nearest ally of the present species, weighs 

 only 5 pounds, with a length of wing of :500 mm . 



