66 ALCID.^. 



were obtained, many more escaping to sea. Faber, on his 

 visit in 1821, did not see any, although some were killed on 

 the mainland about that period. In the spring of 1830 this 

 skerry disappeared during a submarine eruption, and shortly 

 after it was discovered that there was a colony on a rock 

 known as Eldey, or the Meal-sack, between the sunken 

 skerry and the niainland, where the birds had not previously 

 been known to breed. During the next fourteen years 

 systematic expeditions were made to this spot : about sixty 

 birds and a number of eggs being procured, the majority of 

 which were sent either to Copenhagen or Hamburg. The 

 last two birds were taken alive there early in June, 1844, 

 and were sent to the Royal Museum at Copenhagen, where 

 preparations of their bodies may be seen preserved in spirits. 

 Since that date no examples are known to have been obtained, 

 and the faint hope may now be abandoned that a remnant 

 might have taken refuge on the Geirfugladrangr, a lonely 

 islet hitherto protected from the invasion of man by the dan- 

 gerous surf which encircles it. 



On the east coast of Greenland, which in recent times has 

 been rendered almost inaccessible by a change in the drift 

 of the polar ice, it would appear from the researches of 

 Preyer, that about the year 1574 an Icelander loaded his 

 boat with Gare-fowls at some islands, since identified with 

 Danell's or Graah's Islands in 65° 20' N. lat. To the west 

 coast it can only have been a straggler, and Fabricius, who 

 was at Fredrikshaab in only 62° N. lat., speaks of it as 

 excessively rare, and not known to breed there ; adding " sed 

 pullum vidi, mense Augusto captum, lanuginem griseam 

 tantum habentem " (Faun. Groeul. p. 82 ; 1780) : a descrip- 

 tion which hardly proves the accuracy of his identification. 

 It is doubtful if the specimen in the University Museum at 

 Copenhagen, said to have been obtained at Disco Island in 

 1821, was not really taken some years earlier at Fiskernaes, a 

 considerable distance to the south of the Arctic circle. Inas- 

 much as the Great Auk has been erroneously associated in 

 the popular mind with high northern latitudes, and as these 

 misconceptions die hard, it may be repeated that, with the 



