480 ALCIDA 
Beak. Lower margin ... 9). sing 
s. Greatest depth from alae ie lower 
border ee ioe 
9 Distance from proximal furrow on n upper 
segment to the nearest of the 
distal series ... Le nee i a 
eS Gape of mouth to tip of peak fe wae ASaE: 
‘5 Median sharp ridge on lower margin of 
beak ... 3! be a or 055 
TARSO-METATARSUS Bee: Axe Ee te alse 
OUTER TOR) 25 me ae ee aa alee Dies 
MIDDLE TOE... se i a a ae 3 ee 
INNER TOE ... de Bee af het rye Dh is 
ToE-NAILS. Middle and outer ... wee ane Osa 
. Innevr.. re Bae ae O;s5n 
GREATEST DIAMETER ACROSS WEBS bas se 3°5 
HOW THE GREAT AUK BECAME EXTIRPATED. 
The literature dealing with the extirpation of this re- 
markable bird is indeed voluminous, and many are the 
different opinions held as to how'the decrease in numbers 
began to set in. It seems hardly sufficient to say that 
because the largest of our Auks, or so-called ‘ Penguins’ of 
the Northern hemisphere, was not endowed with the power 
of flight, it therefore was so handicapped in the fierce 
struggle for existence that it was unable to cope with its 
natural environment and so, becoming gradually reduced in 
numbers, at length disappeared as a living species. This 
slow process of extinction seems all the less ‘likely when one 
considers the numbers of other flightless or feeble-flighted 
‘Divers’ which, perforce, are periodically destroyed in multi- 
tudes by hurricanes, preyed upon by many enemies of the 
deep, swept from the rocks by volcanic and other seismic 
disturbances, and yet these species still exist, some in vast 
assemblages. 
Were the Great Auk a polar-breeding species, its fate 
might have been far different, but selecting as it did low, 
flat islands in Temperate or, to a less extent, in Sub-arctic 
seas, its breeding-haunts were easily negotiable by whalers, 
fishermen, skin-traders, &c. It is important to bear in 
mind that the Great Auk was a large bird, hardly inferior 
in size to a goose, and so worth killing and salting down 
