The Zoologist— April, 1869, 1641 



At the demise of Mr. Arthur Stricliland, the great auk formerly in 

 that naturalist's collection passed with his other birds to the Museum 

 at York ; consequently this Museum can now boast oftwo great auks. 

 The new comer is an adult in summer plumage. When it came to be 

 cleaned it was found that there was no stuffing in it, and that the 

 body was simply kept in position by wires. Both the York birds 

 are in excellent preservation. 



Of about seventy specimens of the great auk, which I am informed 

 exist in this country, in public and private collections, I cannot ascer- 

 tain that one is in winter plumage (the nearest approach being the 

 one at Dublin) ; and I have not seen it so represented in any picture 

 except Lewin's and Donovan's, the latter of whom drew from the 

 specimen which formerly stood in the Leverian Museum, .which con- 

 sequently must have been killed in the winter time, and can no longer 

 be in existence. 



I venture to offer the following description of the great auk's winter 

 plumage (giving my authority) : — The large patch of white between 

 the bill and eye, mottled with blackish feathers (Dr. Burkitt's speci- 

 men, a photograph of which has been sent me by Mr. Newton, and 

 Dr. Charlton's statement that according to Benicke, a writer in Oken's 

 ' Isis' for 1824, the eye-spot becomes in winter of a dark brown, 

 interspersed with a (ew white feathers) ; chin, throat and front of 

 neck white (Dr. Fleming's specimen). It appears to have undergone 

 much the same change as the guillemot and razorbill ; and the feathers 

 in a fresh-killed specimen must have been soft, even and glossy. 



Olaus Wormius' bird, to be mentioned afterwards, was a young one, 

 " for it had not arrived to that bigness as to exceed a common goose " 

 (Musci, lib. iii. cap. 19) ; and I may here remark, that all writers on 

 the great auk have a marvellous knack of comparing it to a goose, 

 which it resembled in nothing except its stupidity. 



The bill of the great auk is thick and truncated, and it is marked 

 with several lateral furrows : now the furrows in the kindred species, 

 A. torda, are white, and I fancy many naturalists have an idea they 

 should be white in A. impennis. I thought so until I read a passage 

 in Willughby saying that the penguin's (A. impennis) differs from the 

 auk's (A. torda) bill in that it hath no white lines. Ray likewise says 

 in the 'Synopsis Avium,' — " Nullse autem in rostro lineae albae sunt, 

 quemadmodum in alka." On the other hand, what Ray and Wil- 

 lughby say is quite upset by the fact, that the two auks in the York 



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