875, before the scientific world
even knew that its existence was threatened. With this species, the
exact and final cause of its extinction is to this day unknown. It is
not at all probable, however, that its unfortunate blotting out from our
bird fauna was due to natural causes, and when the truth becomes known,
it is very probable that the hand of man will be revealed.

The Labrador duck bred in Labrador, and once frequented our Atlantic
coast as far south as Chesapeake Bay; but it is said that it never was
very numerous, at least during the twenty-five years preceding its
disappearance. About thirty-five skins and mounted museum specimens are
all that remain to prove its former existence, and I think there is not
even one skeleton.

THE PALLAS CORMORANT,--_Carbo perspicillatus_, (Pallas).--In 1741, when
the Russian explorer, Commander Bering, discovered the Bering or
Commander Islands, in the far-north Pacific, and landed upon them, he
also discovered this striking bird species. Its plumage both above and
below was a dark metallic green, with blue iridescence on the neck and
purple on the shoulders. A pale ring of naked skin around each eye
suggested the Latin specific name of this bird. The Pallas cormorant
became totally extinct, through causes not positively known, about 1852.

THE PASSENGER PIGEON,--_Ectopistes migratoria_, (Linn.).--We place this
bird in the totally-extinct class, not only because it is extinct in a
wild state, but only one solitary individual, a twenty-year-old female
in the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, now remains alive. One living
specimen and a few skins, skeletons and stuffed specimens are all that
remain to show for the uncountable millions of pigeons that swarmed over
the United States, only yesterday as it were!

There is no doubt about where those millions have gone. They went down
and out by systematic, wholesale slaughter for the market and the pot,
before the shotguns, _clubs_ and _nets_ of the earliest American
pot-hunters. Wherever they nested they were slaughtered.

It is a long and shameful story, but the grisly skeleton of its Michigan
chapter can be set forth in a few words. In 1869, from the town of
Hartford, Mich., _three car loads_ of dead pigeons were shipped to
market each day for _forty days_, making a total of 11,880,000 birds. It
is recorded that another Michigan town marketed 15,840,000 in two years.
(See Mr. W.B. Mershon's book, "The Passenger Pigeon.")

Alex