1887-88.] Recent Notes on the Gi'cat Auk. 97 



We may now go on to consider 



DOUBTFUL OCCURREXCES OF THE GREAT AUK. 



It is generally admitted that the last thoroughly authentic 

 occurrence of the Great Auk in Scotland was the capture of 

 one at St Ivilda in 1821. But there have been stories told 

 that may be more or less authentic, pointing to the occurrence 

 in Scottish waters of the Great Auk nearly twenty years later 

 than the time of the above capture. I need not refer to those 

 treated of in the book I have already mentioned, but may as 

 well place on record an interesting account I have received, 

 through the kindness of Henry Evans, Esq. of Jura Forest, 

 island of Jura, regarding the supposed occurrence of a Great 

 Auk upon Stack-an-Armin, one of the skerries of the St 

 Kilda group. 



The first communication I received from Mr Evans is dated 

 " At sea, off St Kilda, 8th August 1885." He says : — 



Ha\ang read your account of the Great Auk at St Kilda in tlie year 

 1821, I can now give you particulars of the occurrence of a second example 

 of this bird about the year 1840, or a year or two later, also on the St 

 Kilda group of islands. You may at first sight imagine two stories have 

 been made out of one, because Donald M'Queen's name appears in each 

 instance. However, I am satisfied such is not the case, and I think the 

 enclosed particulars wall also satisfy you. Donald M'Queen died in 1880, 

 aged 73. I know his son Donald very well. 1 often go to St Kilda and 

 have conversations with the inhabitants. The present Donald M'Queen 

 can tell me nothing about the Great Auk of 1821, except that, as other St 

 Kilda men also say, the old men there remember their fathers talking 

 about that bird. But M'Queen says his father with two other men helped 

 to catch a Gairfowl on Stack-an-Armin, off Borera, about forty years ago, 

 — perhaps a trifle over forty j^ears. They kept this bird, tied by the legs, 

 alive for three days, and then killed it with a stick, thinking it was a 

 witch. The bird was left to decay behind the little bothy built of stones 

 half-way vip Stack-an-Armin, where they stay fishing for a week or ten 

 days at a visit. I have seen this bothy, and the men are to search for the 

 bones. I entertain little hope of discovering them. I enclose details. 

 There are but few flat ledges of rock near sea-level about the St Kilda 



says, " There is a rumour that twenty years ago the Great Auk was still to be 

 found on the Penguin Islands, in the mouth of Gros Water Bay, sixteen miles 

 from Grady Harbour, a locality about 250 miles north of Cape Norman, N.F. 

 Of course this is possible, but it seems hardly probable." In a note he adds, 

 " For this report I am indebted to Mr William Sclater of St John's, N.F." 



