ikj XI l Dutcher on the Labrador Duck. I I 



D. M. Cole and his associate, Mr. Cary, saw a female duck with 

 a brood of young which he was sure was this species. Unfortu- 

 nately they had no shot-gun with them, as their only one had 

 been lost a few days previously when their canoe was capsized 

 in some rapids, so they could not procure either the old bird or 

 any of the young. The only persons seen during the five weeks 

 and two days the Grand River party were gone were a trapper 

 and his family, six miles up the river, and a party of native Indians 

 on the second day out. From none of these could Mr. Cole get 

 any information of this species of duck. The facts obtained by 

 this expedition, while negative, serve to point to the conclusion 

 that the species has become extinct. 



The second expedition was that under the leadership of Lieut. 

 Peary, U. S. N., to Greenland. The ornithologist of the party 

 was our fellow-member, Mr. Langdon Gibson, who has furnished 

 me with the following interesting statement of his enquiries rela- 

 tive to the Labrador Duck, and the results, with which I will 

 conclude. 



"The Expedition sailed June 6, 1891, from New York. Fri- 

 day, June 12, 1S91, we reached Sidney, Cape Breton, but made 

 no enquiries, as we saw no one who would be likely to know 

 anything about the species. 



"Monday, June 15, while passing through the Straits of Belle 

 Isle, we stopped long enough to catch some codfish ; here we 

 were boarded by some French Canadians. I showed each one of 

 them the plates of the Labrador Duck in my possession and they 

 all shook their heads saying, in broken English, that they had 

 never seen such birds. 



"Saturday, June 27, we reached the settlement of Godhavn, 

 Disco Island, Greenland. Here careful enquiries were made 

 amongst perhaps a dozen leading hunters of the tribe. They 

 also, through an interpreter (a Dane), said they had never seen 

 the bird. Leaving Disco, we proceeded by slow stages, owing 

 to heavy ice in Melville Bay, to our final camping grounds on 

 McCormick Bay. During the ensuing winter nearly every male 

 Eskimo in the tribe came to visit us, and so, from time to time, 

 I questioned nearly every one of them on this subject, showing 

 each my picture of the duck. On first seeing the picture, with 

 few exceptions, each native exclaimed that they had 'Tark- 



