THE BIRDS 375 



he presently came within a proper distance of the bird, 

 and struck his dart into it; but, as the weapon did not 

 enter a mortal part, the penguin swam and dived so well, 

 that he would have lost both the bird and the dart, had he 

 not driven it near enough the vessel for me to shoot it." 

 The last auk seen alive was in 1852. 



The Labrador duck doubtless occurred in abundance in 

 past times along the Labrador coast. Audubon was shown 

 nests supposed to belong to this species, but he saw none 

 of the birds, and there is much doubt as to the identity of 

 the nests. Cartwright speaks in his Journal several times 

 of shooting pied ducks, and there are reasons to believe 

 that these were Labrador ducks, although the evidence is 

 of course not absolute. That this duck is now extinct, 

 there seems no doubt, as none has been seen or shot since 

 about 1874. 



Another bird which seems to be going the same way 

 towards extinction, a bird which has been in times past 

 perhaps the most characteristic bird of Labrador, is the 

 Eskimo curlew. This bird visited the coast regions in 

 countless multitudes every autumn on its southward mi- 

 gration. Professor Packard, writing of the Eskimo curlew 

 in 1860 in Labrador, says : - 



"On the 10th of August the curlews appeared in great 

 numbers. On that day we saw a flock -which may have 

 been a mile long and nearly as broad; there must have 

 been in that flock four or five thousand ! The sum total 

 of their notes sounded at times like the wind whistling 

 through the ropes of a thousand-ton vessel ; at others the 

 sound seemed like the jingling of multitudes of sleigh- 

 bells." 



