414 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



demand for feathers and eider-down for beds. Amos Otis, 

 in his Notes of Barnstable (Mass.) Families, says that Josiah 

 and Edward Child in early life went on "feather voyages." 

 This must have been about 1750 to 1760, when vessels were 

 fitted out for the coast of Labrador for the express purpose 

 of collecting feathers and eider-down. Otis states a well- 

 known fact that at a certain season of the year (presumably 

 July or August) some species of wild-fowl shed a part of their 

 wing feathers and can fly little if at all. He asserts that 

 thousands of these birds congregated on barren islands on the 

 Labrador coast; the crews of vessels surrounded them, drove 

 them together and killed them with short clubs, or with 

 brooms made of stiff branches. "Millions of wild-fowl," he 

 says, were thus destroyed, and a few years later their haunts 

 were so broken up by this wholesale slaughter and their 

 numbers were diminished so much that feather voyages became 

 unprofitable and were given up.^ Feather hunting in the 

 breeding season is doubly destructive, because the helpless 

 young are hunted down as well as the old birds. The killing 

 of birds for their eggs, flesh and feathers has been continued 

 by fishermen and the natives of the Labrador coast ever since. 

 It seems probable that the only Ducks breeding in large 

 numbers on islands along the Labrador coast were Eiders, 

 Labrador Ducks and possibly Scoters. The Labrador Duck 

 is believed to have been a maritime species, and its breeding 

 range appears to have been as restricted as that of the Great 

 Auk. If the Labrador Ducks were unable to fly in July they 

 probably were reduced greatly in numbers by the feather 

 hunters long before their existence was known to naturalists. 

 A somewhat similar case is that of the Great Cormorant 

 (Phalacrocorax perspicillatus) , which became extinct in the 

 North Pacific somewhere about 1850, and which was formerly 

 abundant about Bering Island. It is said to have been 

 killed for food. Dr. C. W. Townsend informs us that the fisher- 

 men and Eskimos still wantonly destroy the nesting birds 

 on the Labrador coast in spring and summer; and the 

 same wholesale killing which has so reduced many other 



« Otis, Amos: Genealogical Notes of Barnstable County, 1885, Vol. I, p. 187. 



