GREAT AUK. 67 



above questionable exception of Disco Island, and similar 

 assertions respecting Grimsey, off the north coast of Iceland, 

 there are no authentic records of the occurrence of the Great 

 Auk to the north of, or even very close to, the Arctic circle. 



Nowhere was the Great Auk found in such abundance 

 as in the neighbourhood of Newfoundland, where it received 

 from the early voyagers the name of Penguin or Pin-wing, 

 probably from the shortness of its wings, and not, as sup- 

 posed by Clusius and others, from pinguis, fat. From 

 Hakluyt's 'Voyages' it appears that numbers were found 

 on ' the Island of Penguin ' in 1536 ; and about forty 

 years later the same collection of narratives furnishes more 

 exact descriptions, adding that the French fishermen vic- 

 tualled themselves with, and salted down, these birds. In 

 ' A Discourse and Discovery of Newfoundland, written by 

 Captaine Pilchard Whitbourne of Exmouth, in the county of 

 Devon,' published in 1620, it is stated (p. 9) that among the 

 Water- fowl, which are very plentiful, are ' Penguins,' which 

 " are as bigge as Geese, and flye not, for they have but a 

 little short wing, and they multiply so infinitely, upon a 

 certain flat Hand, that men drive them from thence upon a 

 boord, into their boates by hundreds at a time, as if God 

 had made the innocency of so poore a creature, to become 

 such an admirable instrument for the sustentation of man." 

 How long this slaughter continued it is impossible to say, 

 but Anspach, writing in 1819, speaks of ' the Penguin ' 

 as exterminated in that quarter. In 1841, when Stuvitz 

 visited Funk Island, about thirty miles from Newfoundland, 

 he found quantities of the bones of this bird, and the remains 

 of rude stone enclosures or ' pounds ' into which the victims 

 had been driven ; in 1863 several natural mummies were 

 procured and sent to Europe ; and in July, 1874, Prof. 

 Milne obtained remains belonging to at least fifty individuals 

 in less than half an hour. It also existed on the coast of 

 Labrador; and Catesby, in his 'History of Carolina, &c,' 

 (1743), includes ' the Penguin ' amongst the winter visitors 

 to the waters of that State. 



Such is briefly the history, apart from vague statements. 



