GREAT AUK 



193 



The single egg of the razorbill is generally placed in a less exposed 

 position than that of the guillemot, a hollow or fissure in the rock being 

 frequently selected as the place of deposition, and the egg being in some 

 instances situated a considerable distance from the face of the cliff. In 

 shape the eggs differ somewhat from those of the guillemot, and they 

 do not exhibit the extraordinary variation in colour and marking 

 noticeable in the latter, although the ground-colour may range from 

 blue to red. Both sexes take their turn at the work of incubation. 

 The young, when sufficiently advanced to leave the nesting-ledges, do 

 not do so of their own accord, 

 but in some cases are forcibly 

 hustled down towards the 

 water by the parent birds, 

 not unfrequently falling some 

 distance down steep cliffs in 

 their descent. When fairly 

 in the water the young bird 

 often does not seem at first to 

 know what to do ; and, after 

 frequent attempts to make it 

 swim by other means, one of 

 the old birds dives beneath 

 its offspring and carries it 



on its back out to sea, when, by the diving of the parent, the youngster 

 is left to shift for itself. In other cases, however, the young birds do 

 not give all this trouble, but strike out of their own accord directly they 

 are tumbled into the sea. Where the cliffs are still steeper the old birds 

 carry their young on their backs straight into the sea. On land the 

 razorbill walks very awkwardly and clumsily, and never attempts to 

 travel far by this mode of progression. 



THE ROWLAND WARD &T 



YOUNG RAZORBILL. 



Great Auk Like the razorbill, an inhabitant of both shores of 

 (Alea impennis) ^^^ Northern Atlantic, the great auk, or garefowl — 

 the true and original penguin of the older naturalists 

 — always had a much more restricted and more exclusively northern 

 distribution than its smaller relative. And in consequence of this 

 local and confined distribution, coupled with the use of the flesh for 

 food and bait, and in later years the eager hunt for eggs and skins 

 as specimens for collectors, this splendid bird appears to have been 

 completely exterminated before the close of the first half of the 

 nineteenth century. In many modern ornithological works the great 



O 



