ea-faring men frequently
fitted out vessels and sailed to the Labrador coast in summer on
"feather-voyages." The feathers sought were those of the Labrador Duck
and the Eider. These adventurous bird pirates secured their booty
either by killing the birds or taking the down from the nests. The
commercializing of the Labrador Duck meant its undoing. The last one
known to have been taken was killed by a hunter near Long Island, New
York, in 1875. Forty-two of these birds only are preserved in the
ornithological collections of the whole world.

Another species which succumbed to the persistent persecution of
mankind was the Great Cormorant that at one time was extremely abundant
in the {132} northern Pacific and Bering Sea. They were killed for
food by Indians, whalers, and others who visited the regions where the
birds spend the summer. The Great Cormorant has been extinct in those
waters since the year 1850.

Great Auks were once numbered literally by millions in the North
Atlantic. They were flightless and exceedingly fat. They were easily
killed with clubs on the breeding rookeries, and provided an acceptable
meat supply for fishermen and other toilers of the sea; also their
feathers were sought. They were very common off Labrador and
Newfoundland. Funk Island, especially, contained an enormous breeding
colony.

For years fishermen going to the Banks in early summer depended on Auks
for their meat supply. The birds probably bred as far south as
Massachusetts, where it is known a great many were killed by Indians
during certain seasons of the year. However, it was the white man who
brought ruin to this magnificent sea-fowl, for the savage Indians were
{133} too provident to exterminate any species of bird or animal. The
Great Auk was last seen in America between 1830 and 1840, and the final
individual, so far as there is any positive record, was killed off
Iceland in 1841. About eighty specimens of this bird, and seventy
eggs, are preserved in the Natural History collections of the world.

[Illustration: The Great Auk, Another Extinct Bird]

The Trumpeter Swan and the Whooping Crane are nearly extinct to-day.
Constant shooting and {134} the extensive settling of the prairies of
the Northwest have been the causes of their disappearance.

_Diminution of Other Species._--Of the fifty-five kinds of Wild Ducks,
Geese, and Swans commonly found in North America, there is probably not
one as numerous to-day