HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



113 



9 grains. (3) 4 inches 7 lines, by 3 inches 1 line ; 

 weight, 40 scruples 9 grains. (4) 5 inches 1 line by 

 3 inches; weight, 38 scruples 15 grains. 



The colour, also, was variable, some being of a 

 silvery white, others yellowish-brown and purple. 

 The spots and streaks differed much in colour and 

 form, some being yellowish-brown and purple, others 

 purple and black, whilst others, again, were of 

 intense blue and green. 



This bird so recently as 1843, only forty-five years 

 ago, was included by Yarrell in his list of British 

 birds, rare it is true, but still a British bird which 

 within the memory of man has become totally 

 extinct ; and although, as Professor Owen has re- 

 marked, such extinction was not wholly brought 

 about by the hand of man, as in the case of the dodo 

 and the dinornis, it is a fact that the barbarism 

 which finally removed it from terrestrial existence 

 was certainly due to man's agency, and may be 

 reckoned as one of the features of the march of 

 civilisation in this nineteenth century. 



The latest authenticated notice of the existence of 

 this bird, occurs in connection with Eldey Island, off 

 the coast of Iceland, from whence the last two birds 

 taken alive, were procured in 1844. Their remains 

 (the birds were dissected) are now preserved in 

 spirits in the Royal Museum at Copenhagen. It is 

 true that a tale is told concerning one Johannes 

 Propert (a half breed of Disco Island), who declared 

 that he met with the great auk so recently as 1859. 

 He related the circumstances to Mr. Brown, who 

 repeated the story before the Zoological Society. 



According to this story, Propert and his com- 

 panions saw two birds, they captured and ate one, 

 the other escaping. The refuse of the one was 

 given to the dogs, who left but one feather behind, 

 said to have been afterwards found. But, as Mr. 

 Brown observes, inasmuch as Propert was a very 

 intelligent man, and well knew that the authorities 

 at Copenhagen had offered a valuable reward for a 

 specimen, it is utterly impossible to suppose, that on 

 seeing such a rare and highly-prized bird he would 

 shoot and eat it. Moreover, in 1868, only nine 

 years after, Mr. Brown found that the inhabitants of 

 Disco Island, where the pretended capture is said to 

 have taken place, had lost all memory of the bird, 

 although, on the mention of its Icelandic name 

 Isarokilsoc, they at once declared, "That means 

 ' little wing,' " than which a better or more forcible 

 description of the bird could not be given. 



It is worthy of note that the birds which have 

 become extinct within historical memory were all 

 little-winged birds. The dinornis of New Zealand, 

 known to the natives as the moa, was in existence if 

 not in the last century at least in the seventeenth. It 

 was decked in gaudy plumage for the sake of which, 

 as well as for its flesh, which was highly esteemed, 

 it was doomed to destruction and final extinction. 

 It is described as being utterly incapable of flight. 



The dodo of Mauritius, described by several 

 voyagers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 

 and brought alive to Europe on more than one 

 occasion, had wings so short as to be of no use for 

 flight. It was therefore unable to cope successfully 

 for existence against man, who esteemed its flesh as 

 a tender morsel. 



Again, the great auk of the northern hemisphere, 

 as we have seen, possessed wings of a character wholly 

 inadequate to enable it to fly. Its doom seems to 

 have been foretold by one of our old voyagers, Capt. 

 Whitbourne, who in 1620 thus describes it : 



They are as big as geese and fly not, for they have 

 but a little short wing, and they multiply so infinitely 

 upon a certain flat island that men drive them from 

 thence upon a board into their boats by hundreds at a 

 time, as if God had made the innocency of so poor a 

 creature to become such an admirable instrument for 

 the sustentation of man. 



Capt. Whitbourne's description of the means 

 adopted for the wholesale capture and destruction of 

 the great auk is corroborated by many other ancient 

 writers. Thus, in Mr. Hore's Voyage to Newfound- 

 land, in Henry Vlil.'s reign, we find in Hakluyt : The 

 Isle of Penguin, which is very full of rocks and stones 

 whereon they went and found it full of great foules, 

 white and gray, as big as geese, and they saw infinite 

 number of their eggs, the foules they flead and their 

 skinnes were very like hony-combes : full of holes, 

 being flead off: they dressed and ate them and found 

 them to be very good and nourishing meat. And 

 again, in proof of the wholesale destruction of these 

 birds, rude stone enclosures or pounds were, until very 

 recently, commonly to be met with at various places 

 in the northern hemisphere — silent memorials of the 

 means adopted for the capture and final extinction of 

 this unhappy bird. 



Nor is it unworthy of note that Yarrell records how 

 Frenchmen visiting the haunts of the great auk in the 

 sixteenth century (1536), slaughtered and victualled 

 themselves upon its flesh, salting down what they 

 could not eat at the time ; and again, how the natives 

 not only pursued them for the sake of their flesh, but 

 with a view to making garments of their down. The 

 habits of the bird were evidently well known in 

 the sixteenth century, as we gather from Tusser's 

 " Husbandry," 1580 : 



" In husbandry drowseth at fortune so auke, 

 Good husbandry rowseth himself as a hauke." 



The earliest reference to the great auk as a 

 British bird, occurs about 1680, under the name of 

 gare-fowl, in an account of St. Kilda by the Lord 

 Register, Sir George McKenzie, of Tarbat. 



The latest British specimen taken alive was at 

 Waterford Harbour, in 1834. Since this last date the 

 birds appear to have confined themselves to three 

 islands off the coast of Iceland, and in particular to 

 Eldey Island. 



