$282 THe ZooLtoctst—NoveEMBER, 1872. 
Copenhagen then possessed a specimen of Alca impennis. The 
following is a translation from the Latin original text :— 
“ Concerning birds and their parts. The Magellanic goose, or 
penguin, of Clusius (Pl. 1, No. 1), a sea-bird, the Garfugl of the 
Feroese, is of the kind of geese, though with a different bill. 
Above it is clothed with soft feathers, equal in length and nearly 
black, so as to resemble black satin, but beneath with quite white 
feathers. It has a bill larger than a raven’s, the upper part of 
which is marked with some oblique furrows. Above the eyes it 
carries a white and almost round patch, nearly the size of an 
ounce piece of money. Its short and thick neck has, as it were, 
a collar of white feathers. In place of wings it has small fins 
hanging at its sides, closely covered with stiff and narrow white 
feathers, with which some black ones are mixed, and adorned with 
a white border. By the aid of these it swims with considerable 
speed. ‘The feet, on which it walks like a dwarf or pigmy with its 
head erect, are black and very like those of a goose, though they 
want the hind toes. By virtue of its size, it so far surpasses others 
of its kind that, overtopping their heads, it establishes a place for 
itself as chief among them. Our very renowned Olaf Worm, 
formerly in his house here at Copenhagen, for several months fed 
with fishes a young bird of this species, which was brought alive 
from the Faroes, on the shores of which itis abundant. This bird 
was able to swallow a herring whole at once, and indeed three in 
succession before it filled its crop. As Clusius and Worm relate, 
the Datch first called it Pingvin from its fatness, ‘ pinguedo,’ it 
weighing sometimes sixteen pounds.” 
During my recent visit I landed on the island of Skuoe, in 
company with Herr Sysselmand Winther, who took me to the 
cottage of an old man, Jan Hansen, now eighty-one years of age. 
He is believed to be the last man alive in the islands who remembers 
seeing a gare-fowl in Feroe, and from a comparison of dates it 
would appear to be the last recorded instance of the appearance of 
the bird in these islands; from the attention the natives pay to the 
arrival and departure of sea-birds, with their frequent visits to the 
Fuglebergs, and constaut journeyings in boats around the isles, it 
would be very uulikely for any gare-fowl to have since escaped 
observation. This old man, who is now blind, told me that on the 
Ist of July, 1808, he went with a crew to the Great Dimon for the 
purpose of catching rock-birds: upon a ledge at the base of the 
