EX TERMINA TION 2 2 1 



to seaward. In 1830 the large skerry, through a submarine volcanic 

 eruption, disappeared beneath the waves, and immediately after a 

 colony of Gare-fowls was discovered on another rock lying nearer 

 the mainland, and known as Eldey.^ In the course of the next 

 fourteen years, not fewer probably than sixty birds were killed on 

 this newly-chosen station, and a nearly corresponding number of 

 eggs were brought off ; but the colony gradually dmndled until, as 

 above said, in 1844 the last two were taken {lUs, 1861, p. 374). 



In Greenland, for the last three hundred years, the Gare-f owl has 

 only been known as an occasional straggler, but it would appear 

 that in 1574 a party of Icelanders found it so plentiful at a spot on 

 the east coast — since identified with Danell's or Graah's Islands — 

 that they loaded their boats with their captives. All recent 

 explorations of this inhospitable coast prove the utter vanity of the 

 notion that the Gare-fowl is able there to find an asylum. 



But it was in the seas of Newfoundland that this species, known 

 to the settlers and fishermen as the "Penguin," — a corruption of the 

 words "pin-wing," — was most abundant, as a reference to Hakluyt's 

 and similar collections of voyages will prove. In 1536, or forty 

 years after the discovery of the country, we find an island taking its 

 name from the bird, and others are even now so called. English 

 and French mariners alike resorted to these spots, driving the 

 helpless and hapless birds on sails or planks into a boat, " as many 

 as shall lade her," and salting them for provision. The French 

 crews, indeed, trusted so much to this supply of victual, as to take, 

 it is said, but " small store of flesh with them." This practice, we 

 learn from Cartwright {Journ. Labrad. iii. p. 55), was carried on 

 even in 1785, and he then foresaw the speedy extirpation of the 

 birds, which at that time had only one island left to breed upon. a /* . 

 In*^819, Anspach reported their entire disappearance, but it is ^J' ^'^'^:V 

 possible that some few yet lingered. On Funk Island, their last 

 resort, rude inclosures of stones are, or recently were, still to be 

 seen, in which the " Pin-wings " were impounded before slaughter ; 

 and a large quantity of their bones, and even natural mummies, 

 preserved partly by the antiseptic property of the peat and partly 

 by the icy subsoil, have been discovered. One of the last has 

 furnished the chief materials from which the osteology of the 

 species has been described {Trans. Zool. Soc. v. p. 317).- 



Far less commonly known, but apparently quite as certain, is 

 the doom of a large Duck which until 1842 or thereabouts was 

 commonly found in summer about the mouth of the St. Lawrence 



t 



^ Whether on the subsidence of the large skerry another portion of the birds 

 which frequented it colonized the outermost islet is not known, for this spot does 

 not seem to have been visited by any naturalist since Faber's time. 



' The latest account of this locality and of the deposit of Penguins' bones 

 thereon found is by Mr. Lucas [Rep. U.S. NaL-Mtcs. 1887-88, pp. 493-529). 



