256 BIRDS. 



between seventy and eighty years of age. She has 

 nothing more than a vague recollection of the legend. 

 10. Foulis was seventy-six years old when he died, and killed 

 the Auk thirty-eight years before his decease. 



" Hourston interested me further by telling me there was a 

 book, with a picture in it of William Foulis sitting in the boat 

 as he killed the Auk. He very quaintly added that he didn't 

 know how any one could have drawn the picture, seeing there 

 was no one there. This book he ultimately found on the island 

 and brought to me, but unfortunately the picture was torn out, 

 and there was no information about the Auk in the text. It is 

 A Guide to the Orkney Isles, by the Reverend Charles Clouston, 

 1862, A. and C. Black, Edinburgh, out of print, and, I believe, 

 very scarce." 



"From his (Hourston's) description the picture must be lovely, 

 and from a humorous point of view well worth reproducing." 



11 1 have since seen a whole copy of this book in Mr. Cursiter's 

 possession (Kirkwall). There is no such picture in it. Mr. 

 Cursiter thinks that Hourston must have seen a sketch Mr. 

 Traill used to have, and which possibly he kept in the front 

 page of the book." 



In all these accounts of the Great Auk, and the capture of 

 the one pursued by Bullock, there are several discrepancies, 

 which cannot now be quite remedied after such a lapse of time, 

 but it is always safer to take the older records in preference to 

 the later ones, when the memory of the circumstances was 

 fresh. 



Thus the female was killed before Bullock's arrival, or at 

 least before he saw the birds. No exact time is mentioned, but 

 from internal evidence it would seem to have been at least the 

 summer before. 



Bullock does not say that the male that he received was 

 shot-, Latham says, "knocked down by an oar." That it was 

 shot, however, we think Hourston's account fully bears out. 



In Dunn's Guide it is said : "Mr. Traill supposed they had 

 a nest on the island, but on account of its exposed situation the 

 surf must have washed the eggs (sic) from the rocks, and thus 



