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.")