EXTERMINATION 221 
to seaward. In 1830 the large skerry, through a submarine volcanic 
eruption, disappeared beneath the waves, and immediately after a 
colony of Gare-fowls was discovered on another rock lying nearer 
the mainland, and known as Eldey.'! In the course of the next 
fourteen years, not fewer probably than sixty birds were killed on 
this newly-chosen station, and a nearly corresponding number of 
eggs were brought off ; but the colony gradually dwindled until, as 
above said, in 1844 the last two were taken (Zvis, 1861, p. 374). 
In Greenland, for the last three hundred years, the Gare-fowl has 
only been known as an occasional straggler, but it would appear 
that in 1574 a party of Icelanders found it so plentiful at a spot on 
the east coast—since identified with Danell’s or Graah’s Islands— 
that they loaded their boats with their captives. All recent 
explorations of this inhospitable coast prove the utter vanity of the 
notion that the Gare-fowl is able there to find an asylum. 
But it was in the seas of Newfoundland that this species, known 
to the settlers and fishermen as the “ Penguin,”—a corruption of the 
words “ pin-wing,’—was most abundant, as a reference to Hakluyt’s 
and similar collections of voyages will prove. In 1536, or forty 
years after the discovery of the country, we find an island taking its 
name from the bird, and others are even now so called. English 
and French mariners alike resorted to these spots, driving the 
helpless and hapless birds on sails or planks into a boat, “as many 
as shall lade her,” and salting them for provision. The French 
crews, indeed, trusted so much to this supply of victual, as to take, 
it is said, but “small store of flesh with them.” ‘This practice, we 
learn from Cartwright (Journ. Labrad. ui. p. 55), was carried on 
even in 1785, and he then foresaw the speedy extirpation of the 
birds, which at that time had only one island left to breed upon. 
In, 1819, Anspach reported their entire disappearance, but it is 
possible that some few yet lingered. On Funk Island, their last 
resort, rude inclosures of stones are, or recently were, still to be 
seen, in which the “ Pin-wings” were impounded before slaughter ; 
and a large quantity of their bones, and even natural mummies, 
preserved partly by the antiseptic property of the peat and partly 
by the icy subsoil, have been discovered. One of the last has 
furnished the chief materials from which the osteology of the 
species has been described (Zrans. Zool. Soc. v. p. 317).? 
Far less commonly known, but apparently quite as certain, is 
the doom of a large Duck which until 1842 or thereabouts was 
commonly found in summer about the mouth of the St. Lawrence 
1 Whether on the subsidence of the large skerry another portion of the birds 
which frequented it colonized the outermost islet is not known, for this spot does 
not seem to have been visited by any naturalist since Faber’s time. 
2 The latest account of this locality and of the deposit of Penguins’ bones 
thereon found is by Mr. Lucas (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1887-88, pp. 493-529), 
