220 EXTERMINATION 



mentioned was long subsequent to that in which the primaeval 

 woods of the islands were bm-nt. What, then, must not have been 

 the changes which the forest-fires produced ? 



If this be not enough we may cite the case of the French 

 islands of GuadeloujDe and Martinique, in which, according to M. 

 Guy on {Compies Rendiis, Ixiii. p. 589), there Avere once found six 

 species of Psittaci, all now exterminated ; and it may possibly be 

 that the Maccaws stated by Gosse (B. Jamaica, p. 260) and Mr. 

 March (Proc. Acad. N. S. PJiikid. 1863, p. 283) to have formerly 

 frequented certain parts of Jamaica, but not apparently noticed 

 there for many years, have fallen victims to colonization and its 

 consequences.^ 



But from the North Atlantic seas two species have disappeared 

 within the lifetime of men who are not yet very old, and one of them 

 was a truly British bird. This was the Gare-fowl, or Great Auk, 

 Alca impennis, whose bones have been found in the kitchen-middens 

 of Denmark, and afterwards in similar deposits in Caithness and 

 Oronsay, and in a cave on the coast of Durham. This species 

 seems to have become extinct since 1844, in which year the 

 last two examples known to have lived were' taken on a rocky 

 islet — one of a group called Fuglask^r, or Fowl-skerries, off the 

 south-west point of Iceland. Ten years before, one had been 

 caught alive at the entrance of Waterford harbour; and in 1821 

 one was taken on the west side of St. Kilda,^ to which lonely 

 island, as appears from old authors, the bird had been accustomed 

 to resort in the breeding season. In 1811 and 1812 a pair were 

 killed at Papa-Westray, and the stuffed skin of the last of them is 

 preserved in the British Museum, while that of the Waterford 

 specimen may be seen in the museum of Trinity College, Dublin. 

 In the Faeroes the species was formei'ly common, but it certainly 

 ceased from appearing there about the beginning of the present 

 century. In the Iceland seas there are three localities called after 

 the bird's name, but on only one of them has it been observed for 

 many years, having probably been as long extirpated in the others as 

 in the Faeroes. On the locality where it continued latest, there is 

 ample evidence to shew that it once was plentiful. There Avas a 

 large skerry — the Geirfuglaskcir proper — on which, in 1813, the 

 crew of a Faeroese vessel made a descent and slaughtered a large 

 number of Gare-fowls ; but this, like the rest of the group, was a 

 place very difficult of access, and in 1821, Faber, the well-known 

 faunist of Iceland, failed to land upon it, though some of his 

 companions reached the Geirfugladrangr, a smaller islet lying further 



^ For other instances of extermination, effected or threatened, in the Antilles, 

 see note at p. 227, infrd,. 



^ Another one seems to have been canght and killed on Stack an Armin, about 

 1840, but the year is uncertain. In 1887 I saw the man who said he killed it. 



