SOMATERIA LABRADORIA (J.F.Gmelin). 



(The Pied Duck.) 

 By Mr. G. D. ROWLEY. 



(Plate LV.) 



This Eider either is, or soon will be, extinct, and another must be added to 

 the long list of forms which we once knew, but which have succumbed to 

 the waves of time or the hand of unthinking man! 



Darwin says Q Origin of Species,' chap, x, p. 338, edit. 1861) : — '' New 

 species have appeared very slowly, one after another, both on the land and 

 in the waters. Lyell has shown that it is hardly possible to resist the evidence 

 on this head in the case of the several tertiary stages,'' &c. 



Without expressing any opinion upon this, all must admit that old 

 species are going rather rapidly, and as regards them the world is, like its 

 coal-cellars, wearing out. Not to speak of countless fine forms which fossil 

 ornithology opens out to our astonished gaze — the grand Swan of the 

 Zebbug cavern, Malta (Cygnus falconeri^ Trans. Zooh Soc. vi. pi. xxx.), 

 the gigantic Goose of New Zealand (Cnemiornis calcitrans^ Owen), and 

 other aquatic birds belonging to the ornis of past ages, the terrestrial 

 giants of Madagascar, New Zealand, or Southern Russia (^Struthiolithus 

 chersonensisj Ibis, 1874, p. 7), nor even that wonderful raptor Harpagornis 

 moorei — there is sufficient, I affirm, in the losses of historic days to 



VOL. II. 2 F 



