468 THE NATUEAL HISTORY EEVIEW. 



had clioson, without the least good reason, to account Alca impennis 

 an inhabitant of the very highest northern latitudes, and the regions 

 of " thick-ribbed ice," it did not seem very extraordinary that, in the 

 then desuetude of arctic exploration, no voyager had of late met with 

 it. Besides, too, as we shall presently see, there was at that time a 

 constant, though very limited, supply of specimens which kept 

 dribbling one by one into the market, so that now it is not at all 

 easy to say when people became alive to the fact that the bird, if 

 not extinct, was gradually approaching the verge of complete 

 destruction. 



Perhaps, among our own countrymen, the alarm first spread when, 

 in 1846, a gentleman much addicted to the fascinating pursuit of 

 birds'-nesting went to Iceland, and found the idea there taken root, 

 that an end had come to the whole race. Indeed, we happen to know 

 that only a few years before this period less than thirty shillings was 

 the price for which a specimen of the egg was sold by a London 

 ornithologist, who never had the reputation of making a bad bargain, 

 while, not many years later, we ourselves saw another knocked-down 

 at public auction for as many pounds.* 



It now seems to be the prevalent opinion that Alca impennis is 

 entirely extinct. "Whether this opinion be well founded or not is a 

 matter we shall consider further on, as we propose, in noticing some 

 monograi^hical papers which have of late appeared in this country 

 and others, to take a general survey of its history. 



The first paper in our list, so modestly called a " Contribution " to 

 the natural history of this bird, and bearing the honoured name of Pro- 

 fessor Steenstrup, is, we think, the only complete treatise on the 

 subject that may be entirely relied on, and it is greatly to be regretted 

 that no translation of it has ever appeared in England. Herr Preyer's 

 labours, extending over the same ground, are unfortunately not so 

 trustworthy. Professor von Baer's paper is simply a German trans- 

 lation of the larger and more interesting portion of the Danish 

 naturalist's essay, with the addition of only two or three original 

 but unimportant remarks; the fact, however, of the Imperial 

 Academy of St. Petersburg allowing a translation of it to appear in 

 their Bulletin shows the high value attached to Professor Steen- 



* It may be remarked that no reference to the impending fate of Alca impennis 

 is made by an ornithologist so well informed as the late Ungh Strickland, though 

 in his 'Dodo and its Kindred,' published in 1848, he mentions the Irish Elk and 

 Northern Manatee as instances of species becoming extinct within the human epoch. 



