THE GAKE-FOWL AND ITS niST0EIA2TS. 469 



strup's researches. The other two papers we have named are, as 

 their titles indicate, more special in their scope. 



It has been already told by Sir John Lubbock, in the pages of 

 this ' Heview,' (1861, p. 497) how that remains of Ale a impennis 

 have been found in the kitchen- middens of Denmark. This discovery 

 turned Professor Steenstrup's attention to the subject, and setting 

 to work with much zeal, he, after long and careful investigation, 

 compiled the admirable history of the bird we have mentioned. Of 

 the information thus collected we intend to give as concise a summary 

 as we are able, supplementing it by what we can draw from other 

 sources, but we shall diverge somewhat from the Professor's arrange- 

 ment of his matter. We take it for granted that our readers would 

 not care to know precise details of every individual occurrence of the 

 bird on record, except in the case of British specimens, though it is 

 no vain boast on our part to say that we could give nearly all of 

 them "chapter and verse," and as we have placed at the head of this 

 article the titles of the five papers whence we derive most of our 

 facts, we shall for brevity's sake only add references to those 

 authorities of which no mention is therein made. 



That Alca impennis, in pre-historic times, frequented the shallow 

 firths and straits which then, still more than now, intersected Denmark, 

 is proved by the discovery, to which allusion has been already made, 

 of the bones of two individuals at Meilgaard in Jutland, and of a 

 third at Havelse, in Zealand. When we reflect on the very small 

 proportion which the number of preserved, and still less of recovered 

 remains must bear to that of the lost ones, these facts are enough to 

 justify the inference that the bird was not uncommon there in those 

 days. But we need scarcely say that within the period of either 

 tradition or of books, we have no record of its resorting to this 

 district, and the only instance of its occurrence there, is that men- 

 tioned by Benicken, who says that one was shot in Kiel Harbour, 

 about 1790. On the other side of the Cattegat, however, several 

 examples have been met with. In Bohus liin an old fisherman 

 assured Professor Nilsson that in his youth he had seen the Gare- 

 fowl on Tistlarna, while Dr. Q^^dman (the correspondent of our 

 Pennant) wrote to the same naturalist, that at the end of the last 

 century one was killed off Marstrand, and another is said to have 

 been found dead, so lately as the winter of 1838, near Prederiksstad, 

 in Norway. Elsewhere, in that country, there is no good testimony of 

 its occurrence, for though Hans Strom positively identifies the 



