Dec. 5, 1903.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
443 
lows much sand and gravel. Its flight is swift, and 
its wings emit a whistling sound. It is usually seen 
in flocks of from seven to ten, probably the members 
of one familj'." 
Of the two specimens figured in the plate, Audubon 
says, "The Hon. Daniel Webster, of Boston, sent me 
a fine pair killed by himself, on the Vineyard Islands, 
on the coast of Massachusetts, from which I made the 
drawing for the plate before you." 
It is interesting to note that these two specimens 
are still preserved in the Smithsonian Institution, in 
Washington. 
It was not until the very last years of the existence 
of this species that its rarity came to be realized. As 
soon, however, as this began to be suspected, every 
ef¥ort was made to secure and preserve specimens that 
became accessible. In his "American Duck Shooting" 
Grinnell says: 
"The pied duck was a strong flier and apparently well 
able to take care of itself, and its practical extinction 
took place before gunning was practiced on any very 
great scale. It was not especially sought for as a table 
bird, and no satisfactory reason has as yet been ad- 
vanced for its disappearance. * * * very beau- 
tiful group of Labrador ducks is to be seen in the 
American Museum of Natural History, in New York, 
where five specimens have been handsomely mounted 
in their natural surroundings." 
A few years ago Mr. William Dutcher, so well known 
for his study of the birds of Long Island, and still 
more widely for the faithful and long-continued work 
that he has done toward protecting the native birds 
of America, published in the Auk, three papers on the 
known specimens of the Labrador duck, from which 
we take a number of facts and paragraphs. 
Mr. Dutcher's first paper appeared in April, 1891, and 
subsequent papers in January and April, 1894. His 
investigations have increased the number of known 
specimens of this species from 33 to 42, of which, how- 
ever, some have been lost. These specimens are di- 
vided as follows: 
The British Museum has two 2 
The Liverpool Museum has three , . 3 
The Strickland collection, Cambridge I 
Colonel Wedderburn's collection i 
The Leyden Museum 2 
The Berlin Museum i 
The Paris Museum of Natural History i 
American Museum of Natural History 7 
Long Island Historical Society, Brooklyn I 
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y i 
University of the State of New York, Albany 2 
To these must be added a male, now in the posses- 
sion of Mr. William Dutcher, and one in the hands of 
Mr. John Lewis Childs. 
Collection of William Brewster, Cambridge, Mass. . 2 
Collection of Charles B. Corey, Boston, Mass 2 
Collection of Gordon Plumber, Boston, Mass i 
Boston Society of Natural History i 
LT. S. National Museum, W^iihington, D. C 4 
Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia 3 
University of Vermont,. Burlington i 
Collection of Dalhousie College, Halifax, N. S 2 
Museum of Natural History Society of Montreal.... i 
Total in Canada, 3. 
Total known in Europe, 11, 
Total known in North America, 31. 
Besides these some specimens have since been re- 
corded and some have been lost. One of these was a 
male, obtained by Mr. William Winton, of Halifax, 
by him given to Andrew Downs, and by him to Mr. 
Geo. A. Boardman, and afterward destroyed, because 
eaten by mice and moths. 
A female was received from Mr. Cheney by Mr. Har- 
old Herrick, in the year 1871, by him turned over to 
Mr. Boardman, who sent it to John Wallace, of New 
York, to be mounted, and by Wallace it was lost. 
A specimen was recorded by Dr. W. H. Gregg, of 
Elmira, N. Y., in 1879; it was shot by a lad in Decem- 
ber, 1878, and had been eaten before Dr. Gregg learned 
of its capture. He did, however, secure the head and 
a portion of the neck, thus identif3ang the bird. This 
fragment has since been lost. 
Mr. John Lewis Childs recently purchased from the 
Liverpool Museum a male Labrador duck, perfect and 
in full plumage. It was acquired by Lord Derby in 
January, 1833, and bequeathed to the Liverpool Mus- 
eum in 1853. 
In 1893 a heretofore unrecorded specimen of the 
Labrador duck was discovered in the Museum of Nat- 
ural Plistory Society of Montreal, by Mr. Ernest D. 
Wintle, of Montreal, Canada, and was brought to the 
notice of Mr. Dutcher. It is a yoirng male, and nothing 
is known as to the history of the skin. Again, in 1894, 
Mr. Dutcher — once more through the kindness of Mr. 
Ernest D. Wintle, of Montreal, Canada— called atten- 
tion to a record of the Labrador duck in the "Cana- 
dian Naturalist and Geologist" for 1862. The bird is 
described, and the note which follows the descript'on 
adds, "A specimen of this beautiful duck, the first which 
I have seen, was shot in the Bay of La Prairie, this 
spring (1862) by a habitant, and was purchased by Mr. 
Thompson, of this citj', who has kindly placed it a1 
my disposal for examination. I believe it to be one 
of the rarest of our visitants of this species, and to 
demonstrate that an acquaintance with our fauna must 
be a work of many years." This specimen is the one 
which afterward passed into the possession of Mr. 
Dutcher, and is the forty-second specimen known of 
this species. 
Mr. Dutcher gives some interesting historical notes 
on this species. Most of them are from the pen of 
ornithologists of an earlier generation, some of whom 
are now dead. 
Mr. Geo. N. Lawrence, in January, 1891, wrote, "T 
recollect that about forty or more years ago it was not 
unusual to see them in Fulton Market, and without 
doubt killed on Long Island. At one time I remember 
seeing six fine males, which hung in the market until 
spoiled, for the Avant of a purchaser; they were not 
considered desirable for the table, and collectors had 
a sufficient number at that time, a pair being consid- 
ered enough to represent a species in a collection. 
No one anticipated that they might become extinct, 
and if they have, the cause thereof is a problem most 
desirable to solve, as it was surely not through man's 
agency, as in the case of the great auk." 
In November, 1891, Mr. Thos. I. Egan, of Halifax, 
Nova Scotia, said, "I believe this duck is now extinct. 
My business is dealing in game, and I see many of the 
fishing people from Newfoundland. I believe if any odd 
birds were seen that I would hear about them. The 
name 'pied duck' is now applied to the surf scoter, by 
many of the gunners from Labrador, Newfoundland." 
Colonel Nicholas Pike, of Brooklyn, N. Y., said in 
1891: "I have in my life shot a number of these beau- 
tiful birds, though I have ncA^er met more than two or 
three at a time, and mostly single birds. The whole 
number I ever shot would not exceed a dozen, for they 
were never plentiful; I rarely met with them. The 
males in full plumage were exceedingly rare; I think 
I never met with more than three or four of these; 
the rest were young males and females. They were 
shy and hard to approach, taking flight from the water 
at the least alarm, fljnng very rapidIJ^ Their familiar 
haimts were the sandbars, where the water was shoal 
enough for them to pursue their favorite food, small 
shellfish. I have only once met with this duck south 
of Massachusetts Bay. In 1858 one solitary male came 
to my battery, in Great South Bay, L. I., near Quogue, 
and settled among mj" stools. I had a fair chance to 
hit him, but in my excitement to procure it, I missed 
it. This bird seems to have disappeared, for an old 
comrade, who has hunted in the same bay for over 
sixty years, tells me he has not met with one for a 
long time. I am under the impression the males do 
not get their full plumage in the second year. I would 
here remark, this duck has never been esteemed for the 
table, from its strong, unsavorj' flesh." 
Mr. Geo. A. Boardman wrote from Calais, Me., in 
the autumn of 1890: "I began to collect birds about 
fifty years ago, and wanted to get a pair of each spe- 
cies; I did not care for more. The Labrador duck I 
procured without much trouble, and if I had any dupli- 
cates sent to me, I did not save them any more than 
I should have saved duplicates of scoters or old squaws, 
I have no doubt but that I may have had others. I had 
shooters all about the coast of Grand Manan and Bay 
of Fundy, sending me anything they knew was odd. 
Anything they sent to me that I already had mounted 
generally Avent into the manure heap. About twenty 
years since, Messrs. John G. Bell and D. G. Elliott, 
of New York, wrote to me to try to get them some 
Labrador ducks. I wrote to all my collectors, but the 
ducks had all gone." 
Mr. Dutcher's dates of the capture of certain speci- 
mens have been questioned by at least one British 
naturalist, but there seems no question but that Mr. 
Dutcher has the facts and figures to prove all that he 
has alleged on these points. The testimony as to birds 
collected between 1857 and 1871 seems ample, and is ad- 
vanced by such witnesses as Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Elliott 
and Mr. Vickary. Mr. Lawrence had absolute faith 
in the specimen now in the Smithsonian Institution, 
bearing the label, 1875. 
Of this bird killed in 1875, Mr. Dutcher very justly 
says that it must have had parents, and that there 
probably were other i'oung ones in this brood. Since 
then, except for the great specimen of 1878, nothing 
has been seen of the Labrador duck. 
In the hope of learning something as to the exist- 
ence of the bird, Mr. Dutcher sent copies of the plate 
of the Labrador duck, which appeared with his first 
paper, to tlie north with two Arctic exploring expedi- 
tions, neither of which brought back any information 
about the bird. 
Mr. Langdon Gibson, who accompanied the Peary 
expedition to Greenland, showed his plates to French- 
Canadians, on the Straits of Belleisle, but they de- 
clared that they had never seen such birds. The lead- 
ing hunters at Godhaven, Disco Island, Greenland, 
made the same statement, but the Esquimaux on Mc- 
Cormick Bay declared that these birds were abundant, 
and said that in the spring many could be had, with 
their eggs, at the head of the bay they were camped 
on. But, unfortunately, when spring came, the prom- 
ised Labrador ducks proved to be old squaws. In 
August, 1892, on the way home, the party touched at 
Godhaab, the largest town in Greenland. Here Herr 
Anderson, the Danish inspector of South Greenland, an 
accomplished naturalist, has a fine collection of Arctic 
birds. He told Mr. Gibson that his collection repre- 
sented twenty j^ears' work, and that all the hunters in 
South Greenland had instructions to bring him any 
strange birds that they might get, and that in this way 
he had added to his collection from time to time 
many rare birds and eggs, but in all that time he had 
heard nothing of the Labrador duck. Proof sufficient, 
one would think, that within the last twenty years the 
Labrador duck had not visited Greenland. 
There has been much speculation as to the cause of 
the disappearance of this beautiful bird, and, perhaps, 
no on; has written so fully about it as Mr. Frederic A. 
Lucas, of the Smithsonian Institution, in his paper 
on Animals Recently Extinct, or Threatened with Ex- 
termination, as Represented in the Collections of the 
U. S. National Museum. Mr. Lucas suggests that 
some epidemic may have swept off the greater part of 
the race, but this is wholly conjectural, for nothing of 
the kind is known to have occurred. We do know, 
however, that epidemics occur among birds, for Dr. 
Stejneger has given us an account of a case of this 
kind in the Commander Islands, where many thousands 
of pelagic cormorants died during the winter of 1876-77, 
so that dead birds covered the beaches all around the 
islands. This destruction, however, did not permanent- 
ly injure the supply of these birds, which have since 
greatly increased. 
Mr. Lucas suggests, also, that if the Labrador duck 
had a limited breeding area in the north, which was 
near the summer camp of a band of Indians, the de- 
struction of their eggs might have worked largely to- 
ward the extinction of the species. 
It is quite possible that we shall never know what 
it was that destroyed the Labrador duck, and specu- 
lation about it is vain. It is worth while, however, 
to quote what Dr. Stejneger has said, in the volume of 
the Standard Natural Plistory, devoted to birds, to 
show how the extinction of this species, or, indeed, of 
any other, might come about. 
'Tt seems to be a fact that when a migratory species 
has reached a certain low number of individuals, the 
rapidity with which it goes toward extinction is con- 
siderably increased. 
"Two circumstances may tend toward this result.- 
\v e know that when birds on their migrations get 
astraj^ having lost their route and comrades, they are 
nearly always doomed to destruction, that fate not 
only overtaking single individuals, but also large flocks 
to the last member. 
"If the safety of the wanderers, therefore, greatly de- 
pends upon their keeping their correct route, the safety 
decreases disproportionately the scarcer the species 
become, since, if the route is poorly frequented, the 
j'ounger and inexperienced travelers have less chance 
of following the right track, and more chance of get- 
ting lost, and consequently destroyed. The fewer the 
individuals, the more disconnected become the breed- 
ing localities, the more difificult for the birds to find 
each other and form flocks in the fall. Finally, the 
number will be reduced to a few colonies, and the spe- 
cies, consequently, in danger of extinction, and a cas- 
ualty, which, under ordinary circumstances, would only 
affect a fraction of the members, now may easily prove 
fatal to the remainder of the species. 
"We need only suppose that during one unfortunate 
year nearly all the broods were destroyed by inunda- 
tions, fires, or frost, to perceive what difficulty the few 
birds left in the autumn would have in wending their 
way without getting astray. 
"We know that the proportion of birds returning in 
spring is comparatively small, and the flocks are con- 
siderably thinned down. 
"Under the circumstances presumed, there will hard- 
ly be birds left to form flocks. But birds used to mi- 
grate in flocks do not like or cannot travel alone; hence 
they are forced to follow flocks of allied species, which 
may take them to localities far from their home. In 
that way a few scattered pairs may survive, and breed 
here and there, a number of years after the rest are de- 
stroyed, and stich are probably those few Labrador 
ducks which have been captured occasionally during 
the last twenty years or more. 
"There is a possibility that a few such pairs may be 
in existence, but, however hardy, their fate is sealed, 
and perhaps not a single one will get into the hands 
of a naturalist." 
