THE GEE AT AUK IN ART. 505 



THE GKEAT AUK IX ART. 



By FRANK BOND, 

 1 . S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



A CAREFUL examination and comparison of the available illiis- 

 -*--*- trations of the great auk leaves the mind in some doubt as to 

 the appearance of this extinct, flightless bird. Some of these illus- 

 trations are found in recent publications, while others illuminate de- 

 scriptive articles written over a century ago. A few voyagers, notably 

 Richard Hakluyt, sometime preacher, and M. Martin, Gent., un- 

 doubtedly saw the bird in great abundance on certain islands of the 

 north Atlantic which were notorious as the home of the auk Hakluyt 

 on the American siele and Martin off the coast of Scotland. But 

 neither of these travelers left even a rough sketch of what his eyes saw. 

 Zoologists, naturalists, taxidermists and ornithologists have, however, 

 given us their conception of the bird in black and white, and a number 

 of their illustrations are reproduced and accompany this article. 



Undoubtedly the only sources of inspiration for the earlier draw- 

 ings are the written descriptions of the bird, or the attempts to recon- 

 cile several divergent descriptions by a plate which would strike a 

 happy mean, the dried skin coming in later as a desirable artists' 

 accessory. The mounted skin also has had a baneful influence upon 

 the jDencil of the artist, for in no other way can the differences in 

 form and outline be understood or the reckless indifference to details 

 be satisfactorily explained. Turning to the sources of inspiration 

 which are chiefly responsible for the erroneous, visual evidence of ex- 

 tinction of as many species of great auk as there are drawings of the 

 bird extant, we find that descriptions in detail force a most charitable 

 view of the shortcomings of the pencil and brush. One would not be 

 justified in charging superlative imaginative powers upon the artists, 

 until the apparent mendacities of the writers had been explained. How- 

 ever, to careless observation and lack of familiarity with birds may be 

 charged the majority of the mistakes of both pen and brush. A care- 

 ful sifting of the available evidence seems to warrant the conclusion 

 that the pictures of the great auk, heretofore published, are defective 

 in many important particulars. These will lie considered later in 

 detail. 



In the following paragraphs descriptions of similar parts of the 

 great auk, furnished by writers of the past 3 '20 years, are grouped to- 

 gether making comparison easy and the fact that the quotations from 

 some of these authors cover but a point or two does not render the 

 information given by them any the less interesting. That but three 



