246 The Great Auk. [Sess. 



vivor of his race the world over. 1 His skin was duly stuffed, and assigned 

 an honoured place in Dr Burkitt's private museum. Even then a stuffed 

 Great Auk was a valuable commodity in hard cash ; and so it came to 

 pass that his specimen was sold about the year 1850 to the Museum of 

 Trinity College, Dublin, for ,£50. My father was at that time Director of 

 the Museum, and I have a childish recollection of his delight at the 

 acquisition of this great bird, whose characteristics he did not fail to 

 impress upon us. 



The last episode in this little history I must now mention. As the 

 decades have slipped away, and the suspicion that the Great Auk was 

 probably extinct became superseded by the knowledge that it certainly 

 was so, the value of an admirable stuffed specimen increased by leaps and 

 bounds. The authorities of Trinity College, Dublin, thus realised that 

 their investment of £50 had now become worth, perhaps, twenty times 

 that sum. This had a double effect. It ensured a new and handsome 

 case, and a dignified and conspicuous position in the Museum, for this 

 valuable remnant of a vanished race. But the authorities of the Univer- 

 sity also recognised the excellent bargain which had been made by their 

 predecessors forty years before. In consequence thereof they becomingly 

 conferred a Great Auk pension on the venerable savant, Dr Burkitt, which, 

 unhappily, he did not live long to enjoy. The dismal tragedy of nature is 

 hastening to its close. What has happened to the Great Auk is only one 

 out of many instances in which races of striking and beautiful creatures 

 are being, or have been, savagely exterminated by man. Can nothing 

 be done to arrest the progress of that irretrievable desolation which 

 threatens our globe? The prospect is inexpressibly saddening to every 

 lover of animal forms. 



It is not very easy to realise the effect upon the market 

 for Great Auk remains if it were ever announced and authenti- 

 cated that the Garefowl was not yet extinct. Every day that 

 passes makes such an event less and less likely, but some 

 observers of sea-bird life have not yet lost hope. Such notices 

 as the following, which appeared in the ' Oban Times ' of 1 1th 

 July 1891, tend to perpetuate such hopes, although their 

 fulfilment seems as distant as ever. I am indebted to Mr 

 Bishopp, naturalist, Oban, for a copy of this paragraph, the 

 part of which referring to the Great Auk is here given. The 

 paragraph is headed " Interesting Facts about St Kilda," and 

 in continuation says : — 



Among the passengers on the homeward journey by the Hebridean s.s. 

 were two of the islanders, Donald Ferguson, and Alexander Ferguson, his 



1 The last recorded living Great Auks were killed on Elde)', off the coast of 

 Iceland, in June 1844. See ' The Great Auk or Garefowl : its History, Archae- 

 ology, and Kemains,' p. 21. 



