112 THE GREAT AUK. 



made their appearance, during the present century, in the 

 Icelandic seas and other parts of the Arctic Ocean; but no 

 breeding places to which these birds annually resort is now 

 known to naturalists. With the exception of the late Mr. Bul- 

 lock, of London, no Ornithologist of the present century has 

 observed the Great Auk in its wild state. Mr. Bullock, as is 

 well known, chased one of these birds in a six-oared boat off 

 the island of Papa Westra, in the Orkneys, in 1812, where 

 they had bred for many years. The female bird was soon after 

 shot, and sent up to London. But even the older naturalists 

 rarely saw this bird alive. Wormius (or Ole Worm), the 

 Danish naturalist, who wrote in 1655, is almost the only one 

 who speaks of its habits from actual observation. " I received," 

 savs he, " three skins of this rare bird from Ferro, and also a 

 living individual from the same locality. The live bird I kept 

 for several months in Copenhagen. It was probably a young 

 one of the species, as in size it did not much exceed the bigness 

 of a goose. It could swallow at once a whole herring, and 

 occasionally could take three in succession ere it was satiated." 

 Wormius's figure in his Museum Wormianum, is on the whole 

 pretty accurate, with the exception of the ring round the neck ; 

 and it is probably the only drawing that has been taken from 

 the living bird. His specimen, when drawn, was evidently in 

 summer plumage ; for, in winter, the black colour of the 

 throat and foreneck is replaced by white. According to Benicke, 

 a writer in " Oken's Isis" for 1824 (p. 88), the eye-spot becomes, 

 in winter, of a dark-brown, interspersed with a few white 

 feathers. The specimen in the Museum of Natural History is 

 undoubtedly an immature bird. It belongs to the old Wycliffe 

 Museum; but no record has been preserved of where it was 

 obtained. Friedrich Faber, in his excellent " Monograph of 

 the Birds of Iceland," published in 1822, at Copenhagen, states 

 that, during his three years' residence in Iceland, he was never 

 able to meet with a single specimen. 



Faber's work has unfortunately never been published in the 

 English language; though the late Professor Jameson, of 

 Edinburgh, long ago told us that he had translated it, and we 



