2 The Irish Naturalist. [January, 



That the Great Auk was not equally common on all parts 

 of the Irish coast became evident to me recently, when I 

 visited the kitchen- middens of the extensive sand-hills at the 

 mouth of Wexford Harbour without finding any relics of the 

 bird. 



I am indebted to Lady Blake for a copy of her article on the 

 Great Auk in the Victoria Quarterly for August, 1889. In this 

 she quotes from the unpublished journal of Aaron Thomas of 

 His Majesty's ship " Boston," 1794, which came into her hands 

 in Newfoundland. It speaks thus of the " Penguins" (Great 

 Auks) on Funk Island — "The quantity of birds which resort 

 this island is beyond . . belief . . . As soon as you put your 

 foot on shore you meet with such thousands of them that you 

 cannot find a place for your feet, and they are so lazy that they 

 will not attempt to move out of your way. If you come for 

 their feathers you do not give yourself the trouble of killing 

 them, but lay hold of one and pluck the best of the feathers ; 

 you turn the poor penguin adrift, with his skin half naked and 

 torn off, to perish at his leisure. This is not a very humane 

 method, but it is the common practice. 



" If you go to the Funks for eggs, to be certain of getting 

 them fresh, you pursue the following rule : — you drive, knock, 

 and shove the poor penguins in heaps ! youthen scrape all the 

 eggs in lumps, in the same manner as you would heaps of 

 apples in an orchard ; numbers of these eggs being dropped 

 some time, are stale and useless. But you have cleared a space 

 of ground . . . you retire for a day or two ... at the end of 

 which time you will find plenty of eggs, fresh for certain, on 

 the place which you before had cleared. 



Fig. 9. Left-sided view of pelvis of Aka impennis, half natural size Shows 

 by dotted lines the missing portions in Fig. 8 as kindly supplied by Dr. 

 Gadow. 



" While you abide on this island you are in the constant 

 practice of horrid cruelties, for you not only skin them alive, 

 but burn them alive also to cook their own bodies with ! you 

 take a kettle with you, into which you put a penguin or two, 



