1642 The Zoologist— April, 1869. 



Museum have the ribs upon the bill white, and Mr. Graham, who has 

 handled both, is confident they have not been painted. 



The description in ' VVillughby's Ornithology' (published 1676) 

 was taken from a dried specimen in the Repository of the Royal 

 Society, but the figure is apparently copied from Wormius, and is 

 extremely interesting as being the eadiest picture we have, and 

 also because it was taken from a living bird* brought from the 

 Ferroe Islands ; and that being so, the error of the while ring round 

 the neck (which has been repeatedly remarked on) is very strange. 

 Perhaps, after all, it is intended for a collar such as Chinese cormo- 

 rants have. 



Sir Thos. Brown and other contemporaries of Ray and Willughby, 

 make no allusion to the great auk ; and it is worthy of remark that it 

 is omitted in Ray's 'Catalogue of English Birds' (compiled from the 

 labours of Willughby), so there is nothing to show that Willughby 

 considered the great auk British. 



It is curious to speculate on the habits and economy of an extinct 

 bird. For ten months out of the twelve the great auk, since it could 

 not fly, must have been on the sea ; it is scarcely conceivable that for 

 ten months this bird should never have been out of the water a 

 minute. 



According to Selby and Latham, the great auk was particularly 

 fond of the ugly lump-fish and father-lasher, and the young were said 

 to eat rose-root (Rhodiola rosea). The father-lasher, as I am in- 

 formed by Mr. Hancock, is a fish that keeps at the bottom of the sea, 

 and only a good diver like the great auk could feed on it. 



The great auk is always accredited with having possessed rapidity 

 and astonishing velocity under water, but its feet have not the beau- 

 tiful mechanism that belongs to the great northern diver (Yarrell, 

 Brit. Birds iii. 334), and it is improbable that it surpassed that bird 

 in the distance it could dive. The old ones are reported to have been 

 very rarely seen on shore, though the young ones used not un- 

 frequcntly to be met with ; just as we see twenty blackbilled auks for 

 one adult razorbill. According to Latham the skin between the jaws 

 was blown into a bladder, and used for the darts of the Greenlanders, 

 but I confess I do not see how this could have been done, and am 

 very doubtful of the great auk's existence at any time in those icy 



* The fact tliat it is drawn resting upon the length of the tarsus is a sufficient proof 

 tliiil the pitlure is from life. 



I 



