102 BRITISH BIRDS. [vol. xv. 



is covered with black feathers, the underside and belly with 

 white. The neck, which is short and thick, hath in some 

 as it were a ring or collar of white feathers. The skin is thick 

 like a swine's. They want wings but instead thereof they 

 have two small skinlike fins hanging down by their sides like 

 two little arms, covered on the upper side with short narrow 

 stiff little feathers, thick set — on the underside with lesser 

 and stiff er and these white, wherewith in some places there 

 are black ones intermixed, which although unfit for flight 

 are such as by their help the birds swim swiftly. I under- 

 stood that they abode mostly on the water, and go to land 

 only in breeding time, and for the most part lie three or four 

 in one hole. They have a bill bigger than a Raven's but not 

 so high (elated) and a very short tail ; black flat feet, of the 

 form of a goose's foot but not so broad. They walk erect 

 with their heads on high, their finlike wings hanging down 

 by their sides like arms, so that to them who see them afar 

 off they appear like so many diminutive men or Pigmies. 

 1 find in the Diaries [or journals of these voyages] that they 

 feed only upon fish, yet is not their flesh of any ungrateful 

 relish, nor doth it taste of fish. They dig deep holes in the 

 shore Uke Conyburroughs, making all the ground sometimes 

 so hollow, that the seamen walking over it often sink up to 

 the knees in these vaults." 



So much for the South American Penguin ; it has been 

 necessary to give the passage at length since as we shall see 

 other authors following Clusius have described the Great Auk 

 under this title, i.e., Anser magellanicus. 



The Great Auk, Clusius deals with on page 103 under the 

 heading " Mergus Americanus," and gives the figure (here 

 reproduced) which, as Symington Grieve correctly observes, 

 is not a good one, and appears to be a rudely executed drawing 

 of some kind of Diver and moreover, strangely enough, in 

 no way corresponds with Clusius 's written description which 

 he tells us he derived from a picture. The translation of 

 the passage is as follows : — 



Mergus Americanus. 

 '■There is also a foreign bird of which we here give an illus- 

 tration. Jacobus Plateau, that most distinguished scholar, 

 writes that it was brought from America. He has sent me 

 a picture of the bird done in colour and expresses the opinion 

 that it ought to be classed among the Divers, as far as he could 



