1887-88.] Recent Notes on the Great Auk. 103 



alcine remains, if ever such an event should happen. It 

 would cause a tremendous fall in prices ! But, if not extinct, 

 the rediscovery of Alca im-pcnnis would likely seal its fate, 

 and only be the beginning of its end. 



It is well known that the Great Auk in prehistoric times 

 frequented the Cattegat, as its remains have been found in the 

 Danish kitchen-middens, but none of the more recently re- 

 ported occurrences of the Great Auk in the Cattegat or on the 

 coast of Norway have been sufficiently attested. As I am not 

 aware that any detailed reasons have appeared in English for 

 refusing to believe in these alleged observations of the Great 

 Auk, I have thought it worth while to have what Professor 

 Eobert Collett says on the subject translated. He only refers 

 to those specimens said to have been met with on the coast of 

 Norway. He says : — 



I now proceed to discuss tlie cases of an alleged appearance of the 

 Alca impennis on the coast of Norway in the present century, and I shall 

 treat each of these cases separately. 



1. Boie, in his 'Tagebuch einer Reise durch Norwegen in 1817,' re- 

 lates that one day in August 1817 he saw in the distance in the Ranen- 

 fjord in Helgeland a bird which, as he thinks, was probably the Imber of 

 Pontoppidan {AUa impemiis), which undoubtedly exists in Norway. He 

 also states that among the birds which are to be found in winter in the 

 Westfjord (to the south of the LofFoden Islands), the Iinber (Alca impen- 

 nis) is to be included. How far Boie was correctly informed as regards 

 this last case cannot now, of course, be determined. Since, however, he in 

 both cases gives the Norwegian name " Imber," and relies for this designa- 

 tion on the authority of Pontoppidan, it must be observed that Pontoppidan 

 by his " Imber " undoubtedly means the Golijmbus glacialis (the Great Nor- 

 thern Diver), and that even Faber in his time (' Isis,' 1827, p. 681) assumes 

 that Boie was in error. 



2. In the year 1838 Professor Rasch, in the ' Nyt Magazin for Naturvi- 

 denskaberne,' 1 B., p. 386 — " Fortegnelse og Bemarkninger over de i Norge 

 forekommende Fugle " (" List of Birds found in Norway, with Notes 

 thereon "), mentions that he had just received a communication to the effect 

 that a specimen of the Alca impennis had been killed in the winter of 

 1837-38 in the neighbourhood of Frederikstad, a town situated between 

 the mouth of the Christiania Fjord and the Swedish frontier. But 

 Professor Rasch's authority for this statement, the present occupant of the 

 botanical chair in the university of Christiania, Professor Schiibeler, has 

 since informed me that the specimen in question was never actually seen 

 by him, and that there is no positive evidence to the effect that the bird 

 then killed was really the Alca impennis. 



3. In the year 1850 Lilljeborg, in the ' Kgl. Vet. Akad. Handl. f. 1850,' 

 p. 331— "Bidrag til Norra Rysslands och Norridges Fauna" ("Contribu- 



