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,
1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti vast international endeavor. Even though the Seven Years' War was going on between Great Britain and France, the British Admiralty granted safe passage for French astronomer, Alexandre Guy Pingré on his way to view the 1761 transit. During Cook's journey to Tahiti, the French government instructed all its men-of-war not to harm the "Endeavour", since it was ‘out on enterprises of service to all mankind'. With the Venus Transits, astronomers of the eighteenth century illustrated unity in the scientific community. The entente, however, passed by noted astronomers and surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who were attacked by the French,