1640 The Zoologist— April, 1869. 



remark that the cut in Bewick's book was (as I learn from Mr. Han- 

 cock) principally taken from Edward's figure. 



As every one knows, the great auk, the penguin of our northern 

 seas, had no powers of flight, on account of the modification of the 

 extremities o)ily of its wings. While its Imiiierus, says Prof. Newton, 

 is in proportion with the bulk of the body, and, fully twice the length 

 that it is in the razorbill, the ulna, radius and metacarpus are nearly 

 the same length in both species, only much thickened in the gare fowl 

 (Ibis, Oct. 1861). Until Messrs. Newton and Wolley searched the 

 "kitchen middins," and .Mr. Hancock extracted two skulls, the want 

 of great auk bones had been greatly felt; but an almost perfect 

 exampleof the great auk, in a mummy state and destitute of feathers, 

 was a iew years ago found by the Bishop of Newfoundland while on 

 a missionary cruize, at Funk Island, and forwarded to the British 

 Museum by the President of the Nova Scotia Institute of Natural 

 Science ; and more recently bones have been found in Caithness. 



It does not come within the scope of this little paper to say much 

 about the osteology of the Alcadse, but it may be worth mentioning 

 that I have a number of razorbill breastbones, which differ from the 

 great auk's in this respect, that there is a notch in the hind margin on 

 either side the keel. 



Mr. Proctor has handed me a photograph of the specimen in the 

 Durham Museum ; it rests upon its tarsus : Mr. Proctor says that 

 when he re-stuffed it, he found the skin peel off, showing it must have 

 been high when skinned. I observed that the bill was varnished over, 

 so that the nostril had become invisible. The white eye-spot is 

 neither so large nor so conspicuous as in Mr. Hancock's bird ; how- 

 ever, the specimen is in excellent preservation, and Mr. Proctor has it 

 under a separate shade, whereas the York one was, until lately, thrust 

 in with a lot of other Alcadae, forming part of the Rudston Read col- 

 lection. This York specimen once belonged to the keeper of the 

 Surrey Zoological Gardens, who sold it to Mr. Allis, who sold it to 

 Mr. J. Bell, M.P., whose nephew gave it to the Museum. Mr. Daniel 

 Graham, the well-known taxidermist, has given me its photograph : 

 the white eye-spots, likened by Clusius to a pair of spectacles, show 

 as pure as possible, and the orbit is not included in this white space, 

 as seems to be the case with the Papa Westra specimen preserved in 

 the British Museum. The two mandibles of the bill do not fit into 

 one another, apparently because they have been tied with a string, 

 the mark of which is visible. 



