1 6 Lost British Birds. 



himself more than by all the melody and laughter-like cries 

 of woods and groves. 



This species, although so highly esteemed for the table, 

 was in one way more favoured by nature than the con- 

 spicuous avocet : the russet-brown and mottled plumage of 

 the male, and dun colour of the female, were in a measure 

 protective, while the bird was of a shy, retiring disposition 

 and semi-nocturnal in its feeding habits. According to 

 Stevenson, its extermination in Norfolk may be said to have 

 occurred between the years 1829 and 1835. He adds : " It 

 seems probable, however, that during the next twenty years 

 a pair or two occasionally returned to the old haunts in 

 the spring, though only to be robbed of their eggs or shot 

 down for their rarity." 



VII. GTKEAT AUK Alca impennis. The Great Auk, or 

 Garefowl, as it was called in the Western Islands of Scot- 

 land, is the only species in this obituary which has not only 

 ceased to be a British bird, but is altogether extinct. 

 There is a large amount of literature about it, which is not 

 strange considering the great size of the bird, exceeding 

 that of the goose, its wide range in the North Atlantic, and 

 its importance, while it lasted, as an article of food, first to 

 barbarous tribes and afterwards to Europeans, who were 

 also, in a sense, barbarians. On the hither side of the 

 ocean it once inhabited the coast from Finisterre to the 

 North Cape, but in historical times it was most abundant on 

 the other side of the Atlantic. Its fate in that region may 

 be briefly narrated it is not a pleasant story. As long 

 ago as the middle of the sixteenth century the sailors who 

 visited Newfoundland to fish on the banks there, began the 

 stupid war of destruction. In their breeding-places the 

 birds were quite tame tamer, in fact, than our tamest 

 domestic animals and could be slaughtered without trouble 

 by the crews. But eventually it was found to be too 

 troublesome a task to go on shore, knock the birds down 

 with clubs, then carry their carcases to the ships. Cart- 



