FLIGHTLESS BIRDS AND THEIR FATE. 7^ 



exercise the wings were moved alternately and 

 not both together as in other birds. The 

 maximum weight of a steamer-duck he esti- 

 mates at 12 lbs. 



There is one really very curious feature about 

 this bird. The young are able to fly till after 

 their first moult, when the power is lost for ever. 



The great auk, like the dodo, the solitaire, and 

 a dozen more, is but a memory : stuffed skins 

 and skeletons scattered throughout the museums 

 of the world, and fewer eggs, being all that remain 

 of what was once a numerous people. The great 

 auk it sliouLl be said is a near relative of the 

 razor-bill (Alca tarda) and the guillemot (Uria 

 trozle), such as swarm now on our coasts, and 

 whose eggs are gathered by the bushel every 

 year. These fly well, but in the great auk the 

 wings were so much reduced in size as to be 

 useless for flight. 



The great stronghold of this ill-fated bird was 

 Newfoundland. Our first account of them in 

 these regions dates from 153G. In those days 

 there were no condensed foods and tinned meats, 

 so that sailors were perforce obliged to lay in 

 large quantities of such food as could be de- 

 pended upon, more or less certainly, to remain 

 wholesome for a considerable time. Meat had 

 to be salted, and for months at a time only thi.s 

 form of flesh food was available. Hovv soon such 

 a diet would begin to pall, we, who live in these 

 favoured times, can readily guess. But anything 

 seems to have been preferable to the everlasting 

 diet of salt meat and weevil-bitten biscuits. 

 Moreover, their complaint was surely justified. 



