GREAT AUK. 65 



unsubstantiated records of the occurrence of this bird near 

 Lundy Island ; on the coast of Cork ; and in Belfast Lough ; 

 in addition to one off Fair Island, between the Orkneys and 

 the Shetlands, in June 1798, which is not improbable. Mr. 

 John Hancock believes that a Great Auk was taken at the 

 Fame Islands more than a century ago, and recorded in 

 Wallis's ' Natural History and Antiquities of Northumber- 

 land,' i. p. 340 (1769 Ed.), as " The Penguin, a curious and 

 uncommon bird presented to John William Bacon, Esq., of 

 Etherstone, with whom it grew so tame and familiar that it 

 would follow him, with its body erect, to be fed." 



In the Faroes, Debes (1673) speaks of the ' Garfogel ' as 

 birds which he had several times had, and which were easily 

 tamed, but would not live long inland ; and Mohr (1786) 

 says that some were caught there most summers ; but in 

 1800 Landt states that these birds were then beginning to 

 become more rare. Major Feilden (Zool. 1872, p. 3280) 

 gives some further interesting details, amongst which are 

 those of his interview with an old man, Jan Hansen, then 

 eighty-one years of age, who was present at the capture of a 

 single Great Auk, weighing nine Danish pounds, on a ledge 

 at the base of the Great Dimon on the 1st of July, 1808. 



Iceland, which has furnished the majority of the skins and 

 eggs now existing in collections, seems to have been the 

 latest resort of this species. Off the coasts of that island 

 there were three skerries, each known by the name of * Geir- 

 fuglasker,' on all of which it has presumably bred, the best 

 known and most productive being the one lying off Reyk- 

 janes, which was sporadically visited by the natives. In 

 1808 the crew of a privateer under British colours remained 

 there a whole day, killing many birds and treading down 

 their eggs and young ; and it was probably this skerry which 

 was visited on the 24tli of August, 1813, by a schooner from 

 the Faeroes, sent to Iceland by Governor Lobner to obtain 

 provisions for the starving inhabitants. Major Feildem gives 

 the deposition of one of the crew, Daniel Joensen, taken 

 down in 1858, when he was seventy-one years of age, from 

 which it appears that cither eleven or fourteen Gare-fowls 



VOL. IV. K 



