Structure and Flight 



bill on a very much larger scale. It is as if the 

 Razorbill's wings had been fitted on to a bird 

 nearly twice as long, and many times as heavy 

 as the bird for which they were intended. The 

 Auk's wing was merely a flipper. Ages ago, 

 doubtless, the Great Auk could fly, but through 

 long disuse the wing gradually degenerated. 

 Flight was sacrificed for increased proficiency in 

 swimming under water. 



Under these circumstances the bird fell an easy 

 prey to fishermen, who used to salt down the 

 bodies for food ; and so indiscriminate was the 

 slaughter that by the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century the Great Auk had already become a 

 rarity, while in 1844 the last specimens were 

 obtained off Iceland. Incidentally its extinction 

 was hastened by the submarine eruption of one 

 of its few remaining breeding haunts the Geir- 

 fugla-sker in 1830, but there is every reason to 

 suppose that it would have survived that disaster 

 had collectors given it the chance. Many have 

 hoped that the Great Auk will yet be found in 

 some remote northern island home, and many 

 have sought for it carefully and long, but with 

 every passing year the probability merges more 

 and more into the certainty that the only memorials 

 of this kind are some 79 skins or mounted 

 specimens in various museums and about 74 

 eggs. Seldom, indeed, do the former come into 

 the market, but the strength of the desire to 



7 



