48G THE NATURAL HISTORT REVIEW. 



alone have been clioscn to illustrate that oiAlca impennis. Moreover 

 considering that the most remarkable feature of the latter is its want 

 of tlie power of flight, we surely might have expected to find detailed 

 figures of the wing-extremities, for a knowledge of which we are left 

 to the general and confused view of the entire skeleton, represented 

 in an attitude that could never have been assumed by the bird when 

 alive. 



And now as to the possibility of the bird's present existence. 

 We have already stated our opinion that the Geirfugladrangr ofi" the 

 coast of Iceland, may still shelter the descendants of part of the old 

 stock from the Geirfuglasker, and if we are not misinformed there 

 are rumours, M'hich are more than vague, of the Grare-fowl having 

 been seen in those seas since 184^4, when the last two known with 

 certainty to have been killed met their death on Eldey. There is 

 also, the supposed Irish apparition of the bird in 1845, in which Mr. 

 Thompson of Belfast certainly had much confidence, and another re- 

 corded observation in 1852 on the banks of Newfoundland, (Ibis, 

 1861, p. 397,) by Col. Drummond-Hay, assuredly not an inexperi- 

 enced and imaginative, but a practical and veteran ornithologist, 

 besides a more definite report that a dead specimen was picked up 

 the following year in Trinity Bay. This evidence would point to a 

 locus for the species (independently of the presumptive Icelandic 

 colony) existing in more western waters, and to such a spot we are 

 also led by a remark of Audubon's : — 



" When I was in Labrador, many of the fishermen assured me 

 that the ' Penguin,' as they name this bird, builds on a low rocky 

 island to the south-east of Newfoundland, where they destroy great 

 numbers of the young for bait ; but as this intelligence came to me 

 when the season was too far advanced, I had no opportunity of ascer- 

 taining its accuracy. In Newfoundland, however, I received similar 

 information from several individuals." (Orn. Biogr. vol. iv. p. 816.) 

 Audubon, we admit, is a very untrustworthy autliorit}^, but we 

 are assured by a friend who has lately visited Newfoundland, that 

 the belief still exists as in 1833, when Audubon was there, and there 

 can be little doubt that it refers to the Virgin Eocks, which lie 

 near the edge of, and about midway on, the north-west side of the 

 Great Bank. These rocks are carefully shunned by all the trans- 

 atlantic-plying steamers, which usually make Cape Eace for the 

 express purpose, if we are not misinformed, of avoiding them. But 

 it would be easy to test the truth of the story, and we hope before 



