Labrador 
Duck. 
EXTIRPATED FORMS.] 
BIRDS PARTIALLY EXTERMINATED. 
with. Danell’s or Graah’s Islands — that they loaded ono of 
their boats with their captives. All recent explorations of 
this inhospitable coast prove the utter vanity of the notion 
that the Gare-fowl is able there to find an asylum. 
But it was in the seas of Newfoundland that this species, 
known to the settlers and fishermen as the “ Penguin,” — 
a corruption of the words “ pin-wing,” — was most abun- 
dant, as a reference to Hakluyt’s and similar collections of 
voyages will prove. In 1536, or forty years after the dis- 
covery of the country, we find an island taking its name 
from the bird, and others are even now so called. English 
and French mariners alike resorted to these spqts, driving 
the helpless and hapless birds on sails or planks into a 
boat, “ as many as shall lade her,” and salting them for 
provision. The French crews, indeed, trusted so much to 
this supply of victual, as to take, it is said, but “ small 
store of flesh with them.” This practice, we learn from 
Cartwright ( Journal , &c., iii. p. 65), was carried on even 
in 1785, and he then foresaw the speedy extirpation of the 
birds, which at that time had only one island left to breed 
upon. In 1819, Anspach reported their entire disappear- 
ance, but it is possible that some few yet lingered. On 
Funk Island, their last resort, rude enclosures of stones 
are, or recently were, still to be seen, in which the “ Pin- 
wings” were impounded before slaughter; and a large 
quantity of their bones, and oven natural mu mm ies, pre- 
served partly by the antiseptic property of the peat and 
partly by the icy subsoil, have been discovered. One of 
the last has furnished the chief materials from which the 
osteology of the species has been described (Trans. Zool. 
Soc. v. p. 317). Some 70 specimens of the bird’s skin, 
about as many eggs, and nearly half-a-dozen more or less 
perfect skeletons, with detached bones of perhaps an hun- 
dred individuals, are preserved in collections ; but even if 
there be any truth in the various reports of the appearance 
of the species since 1844 (some of which seem to rest on 
fairly good testimony), so that it may still survive, it is 
obvious that its rediscovery will most likely seal its fate. 
Far less commonly known, but apparently quite as cer- 
tain, is the doom of a large Duck which even fifty years 
past, according to the best-inf#rmed American ornitho- 
logists, not a single example has been met with in any of 
the markets of the United States, where formerly it was 
not at all uncommon at the proper season, and the last 
known to the writer to have lived was killed by CoL Wed- 
derburn in Halifax harbour in the autumn of 1852. 1 This 
bird, the Anas labradora of the older ornithologists, was 
nearly allied to the Eiders ( Somateria ), and like them used 
to breed on rocky islets, where it was safe from the depre- 
dations of foxes and. other carnivorous quadrupeds. This 
safety was however unavailing when man began yearly to 
visit its breeding-haunts, and, not content with plundering 
its nests, mercilessly to shoot the birds. Most of such 
islets are, of course, easily ransacked and depopulated. 
Having no asylum to turn to, for the shores of the main- 
land were infested by the four-footed enemies just men' 
tioned, and (unlike some of its congeners) it had not a high 
northern range, its fate is easily understood. No estimate 
has yet been made of the number of specimens existing in 
museums, but it is believed to be not very great. 
Another bird which has become extinct within the last Phillip 
few years is one of a group of Parrot3 ( Nestor ) peculiar to Mand 
the New-Zealand Subregion, and though some of its con- 
geners still exist in the less-frequented and alpine parts of 
that country, this species (N. productus) seems to have 
been confined to Phillip Island. The last known to have 
lived, according to information supplied to the writer by 
Mr Gould, was seen by that gentleman in a cage in London 
about the year 1851. Not much more than a dozen speci- 
mens are believed to exist in eollections. 
FlO. 43.— Pied Duck (.Somateria labradora ), male and female. From specimens 
in the British Museum, Reduced. 
ago was commonly found in summer about tbe mouth of 
the St Lawrence and the coast of Labrador, migrating in 
winter to the shores of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Now 
England, and perhaps further soiithward. For many years 
From Birds which have recently become altogether-extinct 
we naturally turn t-o those that have of late been extirpated 
in certain countries though still surviving elsewhere. Several 
such instances are furnished by the British Islands. First 
there is the Crane ( Grus communis) which in Turner’s time 
(1555) was described as breeding in our fens. Then the 
Spoonbill ( Platalea leucorodia), said by Sir Thomas Browne 
1 It is needless to observe that no ono at that time had any notion 
of its approaching extinction. 
Fig. 49. — Pfaillip-Island Parrot (Nestor productus). From specimen In t ha 
British Museum. Reduced. 
