GREAT AUK. 453 



land, they seem to have passed southward along the coast in winter, 

 and thus we find Catesby, in the early part of last century (Hist. 

 Carol, App. p. xxxvi.), including the species as an occasional visitor 

 at that season to the shores of Carolina ; but we can well imagine a 

 settlement of, at most, some few hundreds existing for years on such 

 spots as the Geirfugladranger, or the Virgin Rocks, without even 

 a straggler coming across the path of the few sea-faring men who 

 would appreciate the value of the meeting. This belief we confess 

 to fondly cherishing; we cannot yet bring ourselves to address our 

 old friend the Great Auk in the tender words of Milton : 



' Aye me ! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas 

 Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurl'd, 

 Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 

 Where thou, perhaps, under the whelming tide, 

 Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world.' 



Whether, however, the species be extinct or not, the fate of the 

 Garefowl has still much interest. If it still exists, its doom 

 will probably be sealed by its re-discovery. For all practical 

 purposes, therefore, we may speak of it as a thing of the past; and, 

 regarded in this light, the subject becomes even more than inter- 

 esting, because, owing to the recent date of the bird's extirpation 

 (whether completed or not), we possess much more information re- 

 specting the exterminating process, than we do in the case of any 

 other extinct species. Without drawing any over-strained infer- 

 ences, we see how the merciless hand of man, armed perhaps only 

 with the rudest of weapons, has driven the Garefowl, first from the 

 shores of Denmark, and then from those of Scotland. At a later 

 period it has been successively banished from the Orkneys, the 

 Faroes, and St. Kilda. Then, too, a casual but natural event has 

 accelerated its fate. The eruption of a submarine volcano on the 

 coast of Iceland, by laying low one of its chief abodes, has contri- 

 buted effectually to its destruction. But worse than all this has 

 been the blow which, on the discovery of America, came upon the 

 portion of the race inhabiting the Newfoundland islets, when it 

 was brought suddenly face to face with a powerful and hitherto 

 unknown enemy, and where the result has been what invariably 

 happens when a simple tribe of savages, used only to the primeval 

 customs of its forefathers, is all at once confronted with invaders' 

 of the highest type of civilization' the place thereof knoweth it 

 no more.' ' 



