-37- collecting more than a few yards from the shore", yet this island has "a length of five miles and is densely wooded, with many large trees." It is one "of the few elevated islands in the Paumotus, having a height of over 200 feet, with perpendicular cliffs along the north shore"; conditions that point to a some- what different fauna from the low coral islands. M. J. Nicoll visited Pitcairn in 1903, and Lieut. Vaughan, R. N., had sent a bird or two from the same island a few years before. A. E. Stephen visited Henderson in Sept., 1907, and sent about 6 birds in spirits to the Australian Museum. D. R. Tait and J. R. Jamieson touched at the same island in 1912. They were all interested in other things than birds, and only picked up a few specimens. The above probably covers a majority of the work done in the Tuamotu group--a group extending over a thousand miles of the Pacific, and numbering about 80 islands, mostly low and of coral formation, but varying more or less in places, and stretching from about 14° S. to 23° S. latitude. From this mass of islands we have bird records from about 23, only, leaving over 50 that are ornithologically unknown; and of the 23, there is not one that we can say is fully known. That these (and other Pacific) islands are not waiting in their primitive original condition to be explored at some time in the future is shown by the following