British Birds, their Nests and Eggs. 141 



mighty moa and the dodo, it has ceased to exist. 

 The great auk, or gare-fowl, was one of those 

 birds which, from long disuse, had lost at once 

 the power of flight and preservation. It was 

 a great shambling bird, as large as a goose, and 

 ill adapted to travel on land. How these things 

 told against it may be inferred from the story 

 of one Captain Richard Whitbourne, who writing 

 of the discovery of Newfoundland in 1620, says 

 that among the abundant water-fowl of these 

 parts are penguins (great auks) " as bigge as 

 geese, and flye not, for they have but a short 

 wing, and they multiply so infinitely, upon a 

 certain flat island, that men drive them from thence 

 upon a boord, into their boats by hundreds at a 

 time." This process of extinction went on in Ice- 

 land and elsewhere until about the middle of the 

 present century hardly any birds remained. The 

 Icelanders robbed the auks of their eggs for 

 domestic use, and upon one occasion the crew 

 of a British privateer remained upon one of the 

 skerries all day killing many birds and treading 

 down their eggs and young. This went on until 

 the last birds were taken, and there is but the 

 faintest hope that it may yet linger on in the 

 inaccessible North. Although awkward, and 

 travelling with the greatest difficulty on land, 

 the great auk was perfectly at home in the 

 water, and travelled both upon and under the 



