396 Mr. A. Newton on Mr. J. Wolley's Researches 



one day as he was riding along called out to me that he saw 

 two Gare-fowls' bones lying on the ground. On getting off his 

 horse he found them to be the distal ends of the humeri, and 

 apparently a pair. Going to the spot, I picked up a radius, 

 also of a Gare-fowl, the first we had found anywhere. We care- 

 fully examined the locality on two other occasions, and found 

 remains which must have belonged to at least eight individual 

 birds. Many of them bore marks of the knife, and nearly all 

 were in good preservation. They were chiefly lying under stones, 

 which seemed once to have formed an old boundary- wall, and 

 had probably been contained in the turf from some still more 

 ancient rubbish-heap with which the wall had been built up. 

 Just on this spot the sea appears to have encroached, and in this 

 manner laid bare the two bones whose discovery led to the de- 

 tection of the rest. Among the specimens we collected there 

 are several in which certain differences, probably the result of 

 age or sex, are observable. I do not intend to describe them 

 now. I will merely remark that the Great Auk is rendered 

 incapable of flight by the modification of the extremities only 

 of its wings. ^^Tiile its humerus is in proportion with the bulk 

 of the body, and fully twice the length that it is in the Razor- 

 bill, the ulna, radius, and metacarpus are nearly the same length 

 in both species, only much thickened in the Gare-fowl *. 



It will be gathered from what has been above said that I 

 think there is yet a chance of the Great Auk still existing in 

 Iceland. At all events until it is proved that he is not to be 

 found on the Geirfugladrangr, I think he must not be despaired 

 of; but T know of no other locality where he is likely to be. 

 The numerous islets in the Breida-fjor'Sr which have been sug- 

 gested as affording him possibly a last station, are, I believe, 

 visited every year by people from the neighbourhood. Those 

 who imagine he may be on the opposite coast of Greenland are, 



* Mr. Edward Blyth gives a few interesting particulars about some 

 bones of Alca impennis in the ' Proceedings ' of the Zoological Society for 

 1837 (p- 122). I think it is likely enough that the specimens he ex- 

 amined were extracted from the skins prepared in 1834 by Jomfrue Lewer, 

 which I have mentioned. At all events, that lady seems to have left more 

 of the bones in the skins she prepared than is the custom with other per- 

 formers in Iceland. 



