512 KEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



The skull usually breaks across at the articulation of the nasals with 

 the froiitals and many a time did we work carefully around the point 

 of some projecting beak onh^ to find that the back of the skull was en- 

 tirely lacking. The sternum and pelvis are very rarely found in good 

 condition, the thinness of these bones, and their immediate contact 

 with the viscera having caused their rapid decay so that although we 

 disinterred hundreds we suceeded in obtaining but a single perfect 

 specimen of each. 



It would seem that these alciue remains are rapidly deteriorating, 

 although so few visits have been made to Funk Island with the view 

 of i)rocuring bones that it is'difficult to make comparisons, while at the 

 same time the element of luck must, to a large extent, enter into the 

 finding of buried bones. 



In 1863 three " mummies," or dried bodies of Great Auks, were se- 

 cured by the parly in search of guano, and in 1874 Professor Milne ob- 

 tained in half an hour bones representing fifty individuals, from which 

 four more or less complete skeletons were constructed. 



In 1887 our party passed portions of two busy days in exhuming 

 thousands of bones, and yet this great number will " make up " not 

 more than a dozen skeletons, and these not absolutely perfect, while 

 no entire specimen was found, although in the hope of coming upon 

 a " mummy "a holes were dug in many j)laces quite to the bedrock. 

 Neither did we secure more than a single membranous lining of the 

 egg of the Great Auk, although Professor Milne in less than half an 

 hour found " the inner linings of a few eggs." 



The mixed condition of the remains has already been alluded to, and 

 so completely are the bones intermingled, that after many endeavors to 

 obtain those of a single individual, the attempt was abandoned in 

 despair, heads and feet, sterna and pelves being intimately associated 

 with one another, and not more than six, or at the most eight, consecu- 

 tive vertebme being found together. 



An idea of the great abundance of bones may be gathered from the 

 fact that while many humeri were thrown aside while digging the col- 

 lection was found to contain over fourteen hundred specimens of this 

 bone. 



Every part of the skeleton was secured, including even the small 

 ethmo turbinals, although in spite of careful search but one or two of 

 the first rib and third phalanx of the wing were found. 



The number of bones from young birds is extremely small, but this 

 all but total lack of them is readily accounted for by the fact that after 

 the merciless slaughter of the Auks had fairly commenced, few, if any, 

 eggs were allowed to hatch. 



There was a small number of diseased bones present, the result of in- 

 juries, and one of these, a broken and re-united ulna, had apparently 

 been shattered by a shot. Comparatively few of the crania show any 

 evidence of their original owner having met with a violent death, but 



