more ignominious foe. The Samoan may
truly say to his former pet, "_Cecidisti, O Manu-mea, non manu mea, sed
ungue felino_." So rare had the bird become, that during the stay of the
Expedition only three specimens could be procured, and of these two were
lost by shipwreck. I do not know whether another has been met with
since. Probably they are all gone; for that was twenty years ago.

When Norfolk Island,--that tiny spot in the Southern Ocean since so
stained with human crime and misery--was first discovered, its tall and
teeming forests were tenanted by a remarkable Parrot with a very long
and slender hooked beak, which lived upon the honey of flowers. It was
named _Nestor productus_. When Mr Gould visited Australia in his
researches into the ornithology of those antipodeal regions, he found
the Nestor Parrot absolutely limited to Philip Island, a tiny satellite
of Norfolk Island, whose whole circumference is not more than five
miles in extent. The war of extermination had been so successful in the
larger island that, with the exception of a few specimens preserved in
cages, not one was believed to survive. Since then its last retreat has
been harried, and Mr J. H. Gurney thus writes the dirge of the last of
the Nestors:--

"I have seen the man who exterminated the _Nestor productus_ from Philip
Island, he having shot the last of that species left on the island; he
informs me that they rarely made use of their wings, except when closely
pressed; their mode of progression was by the upper mandible; and
whenever he used to go to the island to shoot, he would invariably find
them on the ground, except one, which used to be sentry on one of the
lower branches of the _Araucaria excelsa_, and the instant any person
landed, they would run to those trees and haul themselves up by the
bill, and, as a matter of course, they would there remain till they were
shot, or the intruder had left the island. He likewise informed me that
there was a large species of hawk that used to commit great havoc
amongst them, but what species it was he could not tell me."[64]

I have before mentioned that Professor Owen had recognised the species
in fossil skulls from New Zealand, associated with remains of
_Dinornis_, _Palapteryx_, and _Notornis_. Thus it appears that the
long-billed Parrot is an ancient race, whose extreme decrepitude has
just survived to our time;--that it first became extinct from New
Zealand, then from Norfolk Island, and l