58 Transactio7is of the [Sess. 



IV.— SOME NOTES ON BE MAINS OF THE GREAT AUK OR 

 GAREFOWL {ALGA IMPENNIS, L.\ FOUND IN EX- 

 CAVATING AN ANCIENT SHELL-MOUND IN ORONSAY. 



By Mr SYMINGTON GRIEVE. 



{Read Nov. 23, 1882.) 



It may be perhaps rather difficult for some of you to understand 

 that any special interest can attach to what appear to be such un- 

 interesting objects as the few bones now before you. But they are 

 worthy of notice because they belong to a bird whose history, if 

 carefully written, would read like a romance ; and the pen of the 

 ready writer could put down in black and white the story of some 

 scenes in the life of the race that, told with pathos, might bring 

 tears of sympathy from hearts of stone. 



The last of the Great Auks has, we believe, lived and died, end- 

 ing its existence at the hands of its ruthless and oftentimes cruel 

 enemy, mankind ; and now the remains of this bird are prized 

 because so rare, especially those that have been, found in Britain. 

 What are now before you we obtained from an ancient shell-mound 

 on the island of Oronsay, one of the Southern Hebrides, during the 

 month of June 1881 ; and as this is only the second place where 

 such remains have yet been found in Scotland, they have excited 

 some interest, and having been brought under the notice of the 

 Fellows of the Linneean Society, London, they have had them 

 figured, along with a woodcut of the shell-mound,^ 



I have also to submit a woodcut ^ of the Great Auk, which I 

 have carefully compared with the stuffed skins of the bird in the 

 British Museum, London, as also with those in York Museum, 

 and it is a most accurate picture, and decidedly superior to any 

 other figure of the Great Auk that I know of. 



It may be as well to mention that it is stated that some remains 

 of this bird were found in a cave near the sea -coast of county 

 Durham ^ a few years since ; and through the kindness of Mr John 

 Hancock, Newcastle-on-Tyne, who examined all the remains from 

 this cave, we have ascertained that only one bone of the Great 

 Auk was found, and that was an upper mandible. 



1 " Notice of the Discovery of Remains of the Great Auk or Garefowl (Alca 

 impennis, L.), on the island of Oronsay, Argyllshire," by Symington Grieve. 

 'Linntean Society's Journal' — Zoology, vol. xvi. pp. 479-487, and Plate IX. 



2 Woodcut which appeared in ' The Century,' August 1882. 



3 'Natural History Transactions of Northumberland and Durham,' vol. vii., 

 Pt. 2 (1880), pp. 361-364. 



