414 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Dec. 



The parts of sentences italicised iu the above letter appear to 

 me rather conflicting observations. In the first place his lord- 

 ship appears to have been informed, either directly or indirectly, 

 that the mummies were, or rather the one sent to Mr. Jones was, 

 " embalmed or entombed in the ice,^' and also that they were 

 found at least four feet ^' under ice which never melts /" If the 

 specimens were really " embalmed or entombed in the ice," it is 

 right to infer that they were not originally Funk Island birds — 

 1. e,, were not there in a living state, but that they died in high 

 northern regions and there became " entombed" in ice which 

 eventually drifted on to Funk Island, because the drift ice only 

 remains unmelted until late in summer ; that which is formed 

 during winter on the coasts, or on the islands along the coasts of 

 Newfoundland, soon melts on the approach of summer. Again, 

 on the other hand, it is new to me, and contrary to my experience, 

 to find that ice, even from high northern latitudes, when drifted 

 to and piled on an island by the winds, only a few feet above sea- 

 level, and in the same latitude as the extreme south of England, 

 should never melt! In all probability ice has drifted on to Funk 

 Island for many hundreds, or perhaps thousands of years, — as 

 long, at any rate, as the pinwings have used it for a breeding 

 station, but at the same time I consider it quite as probable that 

 the ice melted annually befoie the birds commenced breeding. 

 It hardly seems reasonable that birds which make little or no nest 

 should select an island and deposit their eggs on ice which " never 

 melts," when plenty of adjacent islands were quite free from ice 

 at that season. From the fact of the specimens being found un- 

 der ice so late as June or July, the man who dug them up was 

 probably impressed with the idea that the ice was a permanency 

 on the island. For farther particulars respecting the great auk 

 on the coasts of Newfoundland I must refer my readers to two 

 papers by Professor Newton, — one in the ' I^roceedings of the 

 Zoological Society' for 1863, and another in the ' Natural History 

 Review' for October 1865, — the latter being a capital resume of 

 and commentary on previously published matter. 



Razor-hilled Auk, A. torda. Linn. — Common throughout the 

 summer and full ; in fact, until driven south by the drift ice. It 

 is called a " tinker'' by the settlers. 



Common Puffin, Mormon arcticus (^Liun.) — Common in the 

 summer, but most abundant in the fall. It is the only species of 

 pufl5n I obtained, but the settlers say a larger puffin is also found 



