in Iceland respecting the Gar e- fowl. 379 



but he was prevented by the unfavourable state of the weather 

 from landing. On his return next month to Reykjavik, he in- 

 formed us that there were no traditions in that part of the country 

 of the bird ever having been there. Respecting the second 

 Geirfuglasker I have mentioned, that which forms one of the 

 Vestmannaeyjar, we heard on all sides that it was yearly visited 

 by people from the neighbouring islands, and, though we were 

 told that some fifteen years before a young bird had been ob- 

 tained thence*, it was quite certain that no Great Auks resorted 

 thither now. 



Of the third locality I have now to speak. Lying off Cape 

 Reykjanes, the south-western point of Iceland, is a small chain 

 of volcanic islets, commonly known as the Fuglasker, between 

 which and the shore, notwithstanding that the water is deep, 

 there runs a Rost (Roost), nearly always violent, and under 

 certain conditions of wind and tide such as no boat can live in. 

 That which is nearest the land, being about thirteen English 

 miles distant, is called by Icelanders Eldey (Fire Island), and by 

 the Danish sailors Meel-ssekken (the Meal-sack), a name, indeed, 

 well applied ; for, seen from one direction at least, its appearance 

 is grotesquely like that of a monstrous half-filled bag of flour, 

 the i-esemblance, too, being heightened by its prevailing whitish 

 colour. Not very far from Eldey lies a small low rock, over 

 which it seems that the sea sometimes breaks. This is known 

 as Eldejjardrangr (Eldey's Attendant). Some ten or fifteen 

 miles further out are the remains of the rock formerly known to 

 Icelanders as the Geirfuglasker proper, and to Danes as Lade- 

 gaarden (the Barn-building), in former times the most consider- 

 able of the chain, but which, after a series of submarine dis- 



* Of course it does not follow, even if the story be true, that this bird 

 was hred there. Faber states (Prodromus der islandischen Ornithologie, 

 Kopenhagen, 1822, p. 49), that he was on the "Westman Islands in July 

 and August 1821, and that a peasant there told him it Was twenty years 

 since a Great Auk (and that the only one of the species he had ever seen) 

 had occuri'ed there. He adds, that this bird and its egg, upon which it 

 was taken, remained a long time in a warehouse on one of the islands, but 

 had vanished before his arrival. We may, with Professor Steenstrup 

 {I. c. p. 76, note), infer from this that the Gare-fowl, even about the year 

 1800, was a great rarity in the neighbourhood. 



2 c2 



