Tahiti rail plantations. Its diet appears to have consisted mainly of insects and occasionally copra (coconut meat). The extinction of the Tahiti rail was probably due to predation by humans and introduced cats and rats. It appears to have become extinct some time after 1844 on Tahiti, and perhaps as late as the 1930s on Mehetia. The Tahiti rail was found on the South Pacific island of Tahiti (part of the Society Islands archipelago) by naturalists who were part of the British explorer James Cook's second voyage around the world (1772–1775). The bird was illustrated by Georg Forster, who accompanied his father,
George Anson (British Army officer, born 1769) George Anson (British Army officer, born 1769) General Sir George Anson, GCB (1769 – 4 November 1849), was a British officer and politician from the Anson family. He commanded a British cavalry brigade under the Duke of Wellington during the Peninsular War and sat for many years as a Whig Member of Parliament. Anson was the second son of George Anson (previously Adams) and his wife The Hon. Mary Vernon, daughter of the first Lord Vernon. He had an elder brother, Thomas Anson, 1st Viscount Anson, and a younger brother, Sir William Anson, 1st Baronet; another younger brother was Frederick