THE PIGEON HOLLAND AIS. 51 



made a dramatic exit. Before even naturalists of eminence 

 had realized the fact, it had disappeared from the face of the 

 earth. 



The true Quagga was exterminated about 1875, or perhaps 

 1879, the Spectacled Cormorant about 1850, and the Eeunion 

 Starling about 1860 ; but so unobtrusively did the Pigeon Hol- 

 landais vanish that even an approximate date of extinction can 

 hardly be assigned to it. In 1862 the Acting Civil Commissioner 

 for the Seychelles had alive three fully-fledged young birds, 

 supposed to be the true Alectorcenas nitidissima ; but the Sey- 

 chelles themselves are the habitat of the closely allied A. pul- 

 eherrima, and some confusion may have unwittingly occurred 

 between the two species. The wild Pigeons occurring near 

 Savanne, Mauritius, in 1861, though at first supposed to be 

 nitidissima, turned out to belong to another species. The 

 only veritable specimen unearthed of late years seems to be 

 the Pigeon Hollandais (already stuffed !) in the Port Louis 

 Museum. 



As for the causes of extinction, one is tempted to draw a 

 parallel between the present species and the Eeunion Star- 

 ling. Thousands of Mynahs introduced from India swarm (or 

 swarmed) in Mauritius, as they do in Eeunion. Perhaps they 

 were too fond of eggs and nestling Pigeons, and so effected the 

 exit of the Mauritius Dove. Then, again, the planters may 

 have exterminated the bird, for the surviving representatives of 

 the genus Alectoroenas are notorious for the damage they do to 

 the rice crops. 



The young birds owned by the Civil Commissioner for the 

 Seychelles would only eat berries and small fruit ; so arboreal 

 were they that they would not alight on the ground if they 

 could help it, preferring to stretch down from their perches and 

 crane their necks to a considerable extent to pick up their food. 

 This circumstance reminds one of the similar tactics of the 

 pretty Bengal Fruit-Pigeons (Crocopus), as anyone who has kept 

 these latter in captivity will admit ; since the Pigeon Hollandais 

 was about the size of a Crocopus, and probably once swarmed in 

 the hill-forests of Mauritius, the settling of a flock amongst the 

 crops might by their mere weight do considerable havoc. The 

 actual cause of extinction will, however, in all probability never 

 be known. 



