BRITAIN'S BIRDS AND THEIR NESTS. 



THE GREAT AUK, OR QARE=FOWL 



(Alca impennis). 



A melancholy interest attaches to the Great Auk, inas- 

 much as since the last two were captured on one of the 

 Iceland skerries, sixty-five years ago, no other examples 

 have been seen or heard of. Although it may have lingered 

 a little longer in some of its less accessible haunts, there 

 can be no doubt now that it has been totally exterminated. 

 The common idea that it may yet be rediscovered in 

 some hitherto unexplored Arctic land is based on a wide- 

 spread misconception. There is no ground for believing 

 that the Great Auk was ever an inhabitant of high 

 northern latitudes ; in fact, we have no absolutely certain 

 record of its having ever been seen within the Arctic 

 Circle. Plentiful remains in many parts of Ireland, in 

 parts of Scotland and of the north of England, and in 

 Denmark, indicate a former more southerly range ; but 

 during the period for which we have records it had a 

 very restricted distribution, breeding only on the coasts 

 and islands of Newfoundland, Iceland, and Norway, and 

 on the Faroes, St Kilda, and the Holm of Papa Westray, 

 in the Orkneys. 



Although said to be extraordinarily expert in the 

 water, the Gare-Fowl was quite incapable of flight, and was 

 exceedingly helpless on land, as well as being tame and 

 confiding, so that its extermination is scarcely to be 

 wondered at. On Fimk Island, one of its most important 

 resorts on the other side of the Atlantic, the birds were 

 regiilarly driven into pens and slaughtered by the sailors 

 and fishermen for food and bait. In Scottish waters it 

 had become rare by the end of the eighteenth century. 



