i 4 2 DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



Even the Kittiwake (Rhyssa tridactyla] found its ad- 

 mirers in former times: Sir Robert Sibbald (1684) reckoned 

 it "as good meat as a partridge," and the fishermen and 

 inhabitants of coastwise villages used it largely as food even 

 towards the end of the eighteenth century. At this period 

 Pennant found that it was used in Aberdeenshire, near the 

 Bullers of Buchan, as a whet for the appetite before dinner, 

 and tells a story of a stranger to the custom, who on en- 

 countering for the first time this appetiser, as he thought, 

 declared with some warmth after demolishing half a dozen 

 savoury Kittiwakes that he had eaten sax and was not a 

 bit hungrier than when he started. But the Kittiwake has 

 survived the gourmets of the Aberdeenshire coast. 



Sea-birds formed the staple food of many a coast dweller 

 in the days before travelling facilities had broken down the 

 barriers of isolation. To this we owe the tragedy of the 

 Garefowl in Scotland. 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE GAREFOWL OR GREAT AUK 



The Garefowl or Great Auk (Alca impennis] was a large 

 bird, its flesh was good for food, its fat supplied oil for light, 

 and its feathers were soft and useful. It lived in great 

 colonies, as the Penguins of the southern oceans do to-day, 

 its wings were too small for flight, and the bird was stupidly 

 docile. So it was that when the voyagers to the coast of 

 North America found it in abundance, they made of it an 

 easy prey. At first the Garefowls were knocked on the head 

 with clubs, but the process became too laborious, and finally 

 planks and sails were run ashore and the defenceless birds 

 driven on board the boats by the ton weight, .so that the 

 boats were often in danger of being swamped. At first the 

 Garefowls were skinned, their feathers kept, and their 

 bodies salted down like herrings and packed in barrels for 

 food. But such is the ruthlessness of man, that latterly 

 thousands more were captured than could be stored, the 

 valuable feathers were plucked off and the bodies burned for 

 fuel ; even when no profit could be made by killing them, 

 the poor birds were tortured and burned alive for the amuse- 

 ment of the barbarian crews bred by European civilization. 



Is it any wonder then that this bird, so abundant on the 



