3o6 GARE-FO IV L 



man, however likely it may seem, is wholly wanting. The con- 

 trary is the case Avith the Gare-fowl. \\\ Iceland there is the 

 testimony of a score of witnesses, taken down from their lips by 

 one of the most careful naturalists who ever lived, the late John 

 Wolley, that the latest survivors of the species wei-e caught and 

 killed by expeditions expressly organized Avith the view of sup- 

 plying the demands of caterers to the various museums of Europe. 

 In like manner the fact is incontestable that its breeding-stations 

 in the western part of the Atlantic Avere for three centuries regu- 

 larly visited and devastated with the combined objects of furnish- 

 ing food or bait to the fishermen from very early days, and its 

 final extinction, foretold in 1792 by Cartwright {Labrador, iii. p. 55), 

 was due, according to Sir Richard Bonnycastle {Newfoundland in 

 1842, i. p. 232), to "the ruthless trade in its eggs and skin." 

 No doubt that one of the chief stations of this species in Icelandic 

 waters disappeared, as has been before said (pp. 220, 221), through 

 volcanic action — 



*' A land, of old upheaven from the abyss 

 By fire, to sink into the abyss again '' — 



and that the destruction of the old Geirfuglasker drove some at 

 least of the birds which frequented it to a rock nearer the main- 

 land, where they were exposed to danger from which they had in 

 their former abode been comparatively free ; yet on this rock 

 (Eldey = fire-island) they were " specially hunted doAvn " whenever 

 opportunity offered, until the stock there was wholly extirpated in 

 1844, and Avhether any remained elsewhere must be deemed most 

 doubtful. 



A third misapprehension was that entertained by Gould who, 

 in his Birds of G-reat Britairi, said that "formerly this bird Avas 

 plentiful in all the northern parts of the British Islands, par- 

 ticulai'ly the Orkneys and the Hebrides. At the commencement 

 of the present century, however, its fate appears to have been 

 sealed ; for though it doubtless existed, and probably bred, up to 

 the year 1830, its numbers annually diminished until they became 

 so few that the species could not hold its own." 



Now of the Orkneys, we know that Loav, Avho died in 1795, 

 says in his posthumously-published Fauna Orcadcnsis (p. 107) that 

 he could not find it was ever seen there ; ^ and on Bullock's visit in 

 1812 he was told, says Montagu {OriL Did. App.), that one male 

 only had made its appearance for a long time. This bird he saw and 

 unsuccessfully hunted, but it was killed in the following year, and its 



^ However, from his more recently published (Kirkwall : 1879) Tour, made in 

 1774 at the instance of Pennant, we learn that lie did not visit Papa Westray, 

 the only locality assigned for the bird. His negative evidence is therefore not to 

 be taken as conclusive. 



