EXTERMINATED ANIMALS 5 
obtainable till 1900, when its skeleton was discovered by 
Prof. Giglioli in the museum at Florence. These three 
priceless specimens are the only examples of a species 
which became extinct in the native state previous to the 
death of the Paris pair, and before it was even known to 
be different from the larger emeu of the mainland. For 
it appears that some years after the visit of the French 
expedition (to which Péron was naturalist) to Kangaroo 
Island, a settler squatted there and forthwith set to work 
to make a clean sweep of the emeus and kangaroos—a 
task in which he was only too successful. 
Before the middle of the century another large bird 
appears to have made its final exit from this world. When 
Steller discovered the northern sea-cow in the islands of 
Bering Sea, he also brought to the notice of science a 
new species of cormorant (Phalacrocorax perspicillatus), 
which was especially interesting on account of being the 
largest representative of its kind, and likewise by the bare 
white rings round its eyes and the brilliant lustre of its 
green and purple plumage. Stupid and sluggish in dis- 
position, Pallas’s cormorant, as the species is commonly 
called, appears to have been last seen alive about the year 
1839, when Captain Belcher, of H.M.S. Sulphur, was pre- 
sented with a specimen by the Governor of Sitka, who also 
forwarded other examples to St. Petersburg. Captain 
Belcher’s specimen is preserved in the British Museum, 
and three other skins are known to be in existence 
elsewhere. 
The great white water-hen (WVotornis albus), formerly 
inhabiting Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, must be added 
to the defunct list. And the same is the case with the 
Tahiti white-winged sandpiper, or rail (Hypotoentdia pacifica), 
which in Captain Cook’s time was abundant in the island 
