438 



^NATURAL history. 



sachusetts, and afforded the Indians many a good meal, as the shell-heaps 

 testify. Its last appearances were at the Funk Islands (just north of New- 

 foundland) and in Iceland. In the former locality, about 1825, it was 

 very abundant, but soon became exterminated, as it was hunted for its 

 feathers. The fishermen would surround a flock of these flightless birds, 

 drive them on shore into stone pounds, and then kill them. To remove 

 the feathers, they immersed the birds in scalding water, and so fat were 

 the bodies that they were burnt to heat the kettles. The Iceland colony 

 was exterminated in 1844. 



To-day relics of the great auk are highly prized, and a recent inventory 

 (1884) enumerates, in all the museums of the world, nine complete or 



Fig. 3G9. —Group of least auks {Simorhynchus pusillus). 



nearly complete skeletons, sixty-eight eggs, and seventy-six skins or 

 mounted birds. Of these, five birds are in American museums. The 

 American Museum in New York was the last to receive a specimen. It 

 cost the donor six hundred and twenty-five dollars. 



The rest of the family of auks is made up of numerous species and 

 innumerable individuals of auks, sea-doves, guillemots, murres, puffins, 

 and the like, onlv a few of which can be mentioned. In the northern 

 seas they occur in enormous numbers, some having a very wide range, 

 while others arc restricted to a more limited district. Of these latter, 

 the least auks, represented in our cut, inhabit the region around Bering 

 Strait. They are the smallest of water-birds, not larger than a common 

 robin. They are black above, white below, while on the top of the bill is a 



