GREAT AUK. 447 



individual, but it would have been difficult to prove it so, and we 

 believe that under the circumstances no claim was made. From 

 the presumed and almost proven inability of this species to fly, 

 and its nearly equal inaptitude for progress on the ground, we do 

 not set much store by Mr Bullock's statement that an example 

 was found in a pond in Buckinghamshire two miles from the 

 Thames. There are many large geese in the world, and one would 

 suffice either to make or occasion the mistake."* 



To return to Dr Fleming's specimen, the following description 

 of the species taken from that author's 'History of British 

 Animals,' becomes of great interest when we reflect that it is the 

 only description given by any British writer from the living 

 bird: "Length, 3 feet; bill dorsally 3, in front of the nostrils 

 2J, in the gape 4J, depth If inches; 7 ridges in the upper, and 

 11 in the lower mandible; legs black; irides, chesnut; margin of 

 the eyelid, black; inside of the mouth, orange; head, back, and 

 neck, black the latter with a brownish tinge; quills, dusky; 

 secondaries, tipped with white; breast and belly, white. In 

 winter the brownish black of the throat and foreneck is replaced 

 by white, as I had an opportunity of observing in a living bird 

 brought from St. Kilda in 1822. When fed in confinement it 

 holds up its head expressing its anxiety by shaking the head and 

 neck and uttering a gurgling noise. It dives and swims under 

 water, even with a long cord attached to its foot, with incredible 

 swiftness." 



In a series of papers on the Outer Hebrides, contributed by the 

 late Professor Macgillivray, to the Edinburgh Journal of Natural 

 and Geographical Science, in 1830, the following note occurs in a 



* In a manuscript list of the "Birds of Renfrewshire," now before me, 

 prepared many years ago by various members of the Philosophical Society of 

 Paisley, I find the Great Auk included, on the authority of a Mr Small who, 

 as I have been informed, died in 1860. On making inquiry at one of his 

 personal friends, I find that some vague recollections of the bird, which was 

 washed ashore dead near Gourock about fifty years ago, are yet entertained by 

 the surviving compilers of the list. Mr Small could not have mistaken any 

 other bird for the Great Auk, as the list includes the Great Northern Diver 

 a species which is sometimes confused with it in districts where Gaelic names 

 only are in use. If, therefore, Mr Small's record be correct, and I have no 

 reason to doubt it, may it not account for the ultimate fate of Dr Fleming's 

 specimen, Gourock being situated at a part of the Firth of Clyde likely to be 

 visited by a bewildered bird from the coast of Arran, where this half-emaciated 

 garefowl regained its freedom ? 



