1856 The Zoologist — October, J869. 



The parts of sentences italicised in the above letter appear to me 

 rather conflicting observations. In the first place his lordship ap- 

 pears to have been informed, either directly or indirectly, that the 

 mummies were, or rather the one sent to Mr. Jones was, " embalmed 

 or entombed in the ice," and also that they were found at least four 

 feet " under ice vfh'\ch never mells f^ If the specimens were really 

 " embalmed or entombed in the ice," it is right to infer that they were 

 not originally Funk Island birds — i. e., were not there in a living state, 

 but that they died in high northern regions and there became " en- 

 tombed" in ice which eventually drifted on to Funk Island, because 

 the drift ice onli/ remains unmelted until late in summer; that which 

 is formed during winter on the coasts, or on the islands along the 

 coasts of Newfoundland, soo7i melts on the approach of summer. 

 Again, on the other hand, it is new to me, and contrary to my ex- 

 perience, to find that ice, even from high northern latitudes, when 

 drifted to and pilfed on an island by the winds, only a few feet above 

 sea-level, and in the same latitude as the extreme south of England, 

 should never melt! In all probability ice has drifted on to Funk 

 Island for many hundreds, or perhaps thousands of years, — as long, 

 at any rate, as the pinwings have used it for a breeding station, but at 

 the same time I consider it quite as probable that the ice melted 

 annually before the birds commenced breeding. It hardly seems 

 reasonable that birds which make little or no nest should select an 

 island and deposit their eggs on ice which " never melts," when plenty 

 of adjacent islands were quite free from ice at that season. From the 

 fact of the specimens being found under ice so late as June or July, 

 the man who dug them up was probably impressed with the idea that 

 the ice was a permanency on the island. For further particulars 

 respecting the great auk on the coasts of Newfoundland I must refer 

 my readers to two papers by Professor Newton, — one in the ' Pro- 

 ceedings of the Zoological Society' for 186.3, and another in the 

 'Natural History Review' for October 1865, — the latter being a 

 capital resume of and commentary on previously published matter. 



Razor-billed Auk, A. torda, Linn. — Common throughout the 

 summer and fall ; in fact, until driven south by the drift ice. It is 

 called a "tinker" by the settlers. 



I did not care lo have a second specimen, and so sent it to Mr. Jones, by whom it 

 was given lo the British Museum, where its skeleton — a very perfect one— is now 

 to be seen." 



