( 98 ) 

 NOTES ON THE GREAT AUK. 



BV 



W. H. MULLENS, m.a., ll.m. 



We have been recently re-reading Mr. Gurney's Early Annals 

 of Ornithology * and while fully conscious of the valuable 

 work which that author has accomplished in compiling such 

 an important and interesting book of reference to the " ancient 

 passages about birds," we have also been astonished to 

 find in the case of many of the species dealt with how much 

 more remains to be added, and have been at some small 

 pains to note certain references which Mr. Gurney has omitted 

 either through want of space or because they have escaped 

 his notice. We may return to this subject again, but for 

 the purpose of the present article we will confine ourselves 

 to references to the Great Auk, Alca impennis. This most 

 interesting bird is but very briefly dealt with by Mr. Gurney, 

 being but incidentally mentioned in quotirlg Car tier's account 

 of the Solan Goose as given in Hakluyt's voyages (ed. 1904), 

 and again in the mention of John Evelyn's \dsit to St. James's 

 Park in February 1665, when the Diarist records that among 

 the birds he saw there was " a small waterfowl not bigger 

 than a moorhen that went almost erect like the Penguin of 

 America," this Mr. Gurney concludes to have been the Great 

 Auk, though as the northern continent is not specified, this 

 is uncertain. The only direct reference to Alca impennis 

 appears on page 193 of the Annals where, in mentioning the 

 Exoticorum Lihri Decern of Carolus Clusius (1526-1609), 

 published in 1605, attention is drawn to the fact that the 

 Great Auk is included in the figures " of about fourteen 

 other birds [besides the Solan Goose] in this volume including 

 the Dodo . . . but they are somewhat rudely done. The 

 Great Auk is wrongly represented in the attitude of a Goose, 

 but the Penguin from Magellan is correctly given an upright 

 attitude." Although Symington Grieve has in his mono- 

 graph on the Great Auk {The Great Auk or Garefowl, etc., by 



* I vol. 8vo London, 192 1 (Witherby). 



