BIRDS OF ICELAND 125 



at sea, and does not approach the coasts closely, except 

 in stormy weather and during the breeding season. 



Alca impennis, Linn. 

 Great Auk, Garefowl. 



Native name : ' Geir-fugl,' etymology uncertain. 



Formerly a resident in Iceland, much more abun- 

 dant in Labrador and Newfoundland ; but the bird has 

 not been seen alive for more than fifty years, and is 

 undoubtedly extinct. Its extinction is, no doubt, due 

 to man's agency. For it was a large bird, with a 

 stupid insensibility to danger, and also, unfortunately 

 for itself, it was so short-winged as to be flightless ; and 

 it was good to eat. It could easily be overtaken and 

 knocked on the head with a stick ; it even allowed 

 itself to be driven on board a ship over a plank or a 

 sail stretched between the deck and the shore. We 

 hear of Great Auks being thus obtained by the ton 

 weight, and afterwards salted in barrels, so that the 

 fishermen and others who visited the Newfoundland 

 coasts and fishing banks counted on a supply of these 

 birds to victual their ships. They seem also to have 

 been killed there merely for their feathers. Nothing 

 could withstand such a wholesale persecution, let alone 

 a bird of so confiding or stupid a disposition, which 

 only laid one egg in the year, so the Great Auk in 

 North America vanished from the earth like Rytina 

 stelleri, the Manatee of Behring's Straits, which only 



