The Samoa Isles in the Pacific recently possessed a large and handsome kind of pigeon, of richly-coloured plumage, which the natives called _Manu-mea_, but to which modern naturalists have given the name of _Didunculus strigirostris_. It was, both by structure and habit, essentially a ground pigeon, but not so exclusively but that it fed, and roosted too, according to Lieut. Walpole, among the branches of tall trees. Mr T. Peale, the naturalist of the U. S. Exploring Expedition, who first described it, informs us that according to the tradition of the natives, it once abounded; but some years ago these persons, like more civilised folks, had a strong desire to make pets of cats, and found, by means of whale-ships, opportunities of procuring a supply; but the consequence of the introduction of "pussy,"--for under this familiar old-country title were the exotic tabbies introduced--was the rapid diminution of the handsome _Manu-mea_. Pussy did not fancy yams and taro--the vegetable diet on which the natives regaled--and took to the woods and mountains to search for something better. There she met with the feeble-winged _Didunculus_ scratching the soft earth for seeds, and with a purr and a mew soon scraped acquaintance with the stranger. Pussy declared she loved him well, and so she did--too well, in fact; she felt "as if she could eat him up,"--_and did_. The news soon spread among the tabbies that there were sweet birds in the woods, and the result is the almost total disappearance of poor _Manu-mea_. Like the Dodo, it has ceased to be, but at the hand of a more ignominious foe. The Samoan may truly say to his former pet, "_Cecidisti, O Manu-mea, non manu meâ, 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:--