FEATHERED FORMS OF OTHER DAYS. 
362 
to the rails, that disappeared from the isle of 
Bourbon towards the close of the seventeenth 
century. It is said of it that it ran with sur- 
prising swiftness. 
As the instincts, feelings, and aspirations of 
all true naturalists have in all probability suf- 
fered no change since the days, two centuries 
ago, when the hardy Portuguese and Dutch ex- 
plorers first put foot on these solitary islands, 
what must have been the sensations of the 
artists and naturalists that sailed with them — 
for we are told that such were along — when 
they were first confronted with such shapes? 
They met no men in this tropical Mauritius, 
as did Columbus, a century before, on the 
beach of San Salvador ; but to the lovers 
of the great unknown in nature a far more 
diversified picture was presented here, and 
only such a one as the tropics can give us. 
On the forest’s edge may have been seen a 
group of ponderous and clumsy dodos; there, 
stalking along by the marsh-land below, mak- 
ing tremendous pace, great, slim-proportioned 
rails, six feet in height ; these wonders and 
others in a setting of the grandest of land- 
scapes. 
The last thirty years has seen two birds 
disappear from our own American fauna ; 
and our naturalists will tell you that this gap 
has been made by the extirpation of the great 
auk ( Alca imfennis ) and the duck of Labrador, 
or the pied duck, as Audubon gave him to us. 
The disappearance of the former had long 
been predicted, but the doom of the latter 
had never been anticipated. The great auk, 
or the gare-fowl as it is more commonly called 
in Europe, has with us still several, though 
much smaller, existing relatives ; these latter, 
however, have the power of flight, which the 
gare-fowl did not. It was owing to this cir- 
cumstance that their extinct relation came 
by the name of penguin — a bird they, upon 
casual inspection, closely resembled, and whose 
habits were not at all dissimilar; in fact, the 
great auk filled the penguin’s place on the 
Newfoundland and Labrador coasts. The 
chief factor in the extinction of this water- 
fowl was the fishermen who visited its other- 
wise secluded resorts. These people killed 
them in large numbers, and the youn’g, we 
are informed, were used for bait. 
From his own statements in his unrivaled 
work, it seems that Audubon never saw, 
even in his day, a specimen of this bird on 
our coast, and this author tells us that “ the 
only authentic account of the occurrence of 
this bird on our coast that 1 possess was 
obtained from Mr. Henry Havell, brother of 
my engraver, who, when on his passage from 
New York to England, hooked a great auk 
on the banks of Newfoundland, in extremely 
boisterous weather. On being hauled on 
board it was left at liberty on the deck. It 
walked very awkwardly, often tumbling over, 
bit every one within reach of its powerful bill, 
and refused food of all kinds. After continu- 
ing several days on board it was restored to 
its proper element.” 
Great auks were captured either in Iceland 
or some of the off-lying islands of the con- 
tinent, including Great Britain and Ireland, as 
late as the year 1844 ; and our friends across 
the water have been far more fortunate in 
the number of specimens and other relics 
than we have. In this country I know of but 
three examples in museums, while abroad 
some seventy specimens have been preserved, 
and sufficient other material to have enabled 
Sir Richard Owen to give us one of his 
magnificent royal quartos treating of its 
osteology. 
The pied duck was never dreamt of as 
being on the road towards extinction even in 
the very latter days of Audubon’s writing, and 
its disappearance was quite sudden. This 
duck never was known to carry its migrations 
far inland, but was confined along the Atlantic 
coast to Labrador and northward, rarely being 
seen south of New Jersey. It bred off the 
mouth of the St. Lawrence, on the rocky islets, 
and English ornithologists say not much north 
of this, citing this as one of the causes of its 
extermination, for persons visiting these re- 
sorts for its eggs killed large numbers of the 
ducks besides. There were no other evident 
causes why such a bird should become so 
suddenly extinct, for it was a strong flier, not 
brilliantly plumaged, nor particularly sought 
after for its flesh. A specimen of the pied duck 
was killed in Halifax harbor in the year 1852 ; 
but even at that time no foreboding had been 
expressed by ornithologists as to its probable 
early extinction. Quite recently two hundred 
dollars was offered in England for a well- 
preserved pair of these birds. 
Audubon drew the beautiful pair of these 
birds, in the plate in his princely work, from 
two he had received from the “ Honorable 
Daniel Webster of Boston, who killed them 
himself on the Vineyard Islands, on the coast 
of Massachusetts.” 
The pied duck was a few inches smaller 
than the common Arctic eider, to which it 
was nearly related. There are good speci- 
mens of it in the Smithsonian Institution, 
but so rapid and unexpected was its de- 
parture that the writer is unable to say how 
well the museums abroad are favored in this 
respect. 
We learn that a bird quite recently has been 
eliminated from the fauna of Philip Island in 
the South Pacific; this time it is a parrot, 
