246 BIRDS. 



page 75 of the sixteenth edition of Bullock's Companion 1 to his 

 London museum, as it has not been so often quoted : 



" The Great Auk or northern penguin (Aha impennis). Of 

 this rare and noble bird we have no account of any having been 

 killed on the shores of Britain, except this specimen, for upwards 

 of an hundred years ; it was taken at Papa Westray, in 

 Orkney, to the rocks of which it had resorted for several years, 

 in the summer of 1813, and was finely preserved and sent to me 

 by Miss Traill of that island, a lady to whom I am under con- 

 siderable obligations for procuring me many valuable and rare 

 subjects from the northern isles, and much interesting informa- 

 tion respecting their habits." 



"I had the pleasure of examining this curious bird on its 

 native element ; it is wholly incapable of flight, but so expert a 

 diver that every effort to shoot it was ineffectual." 



The following is extracted from a priced sale-catalogue of 

 Bullock's museum : 



"Lot 43. Great Auk. A lea impennis. A very fine specimen 

 of this exceedingly rare bird, killed at Papa Westray, in the 

 Orkneys, the only one taken on the British coast for many 

 years, and an egg, in glass case. Dr. Leach, ,16, 5s. 6d." 



We are indebted to Professor Newton for these extracts, 

 which he himself was the first to point out to us from copies of 

 both the works quoted in his possession. 



We are also very greatly indebted to Mr. William Evans, Edin- 

 burgh, for the following most interesting notice taken from the 

 Scots Magazine for March 1814 (p. 167). It was written by 

 Patrick Neill, who visited the Orkneys in 1804, and published 

 an account of his travels there in 1806, and who was an excel- 

 lent naturalist for his day. He seems to have visited Papa 

 Westray and its Holm, but was too late (August 8th) to see a 

 Garefowl, which by that time would have hatched its young 

 and left the land. This account we do not remember to have 

 seen noticed or quoted before, and its great value consists in its 

 being almost co-temporary with that of Bullock, besides being 



1 Companion to the London Museum, etc. , now open for the public inspection in 

 the Egyptian Temple, Piccadilly, London. 



