Jan.20, lS8S.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



59 



Natural l^isitora?* 



THE GREAT AUK. 

 Great interest has lately been aroused in ornithological 

 circles by the sale of an egg oi the Great Auk [Alca ini- 

 pennis) atapricevvhich, to those uninitiated in the mysteries 

 of bird life, must seem extravagant. It is not often, however, 

 that collectors have a chance of acquiring an egg of this 



Britain. Sir William Hooker mentions one found near 

 Southwold in Suffolk, Mr. Bullock another taken en the 

 estate of Sir William Clayton, Bart, near iV'Iarlow, 

 Buckinghamshire, and Dr. Edward Moore has recorded 

 one which was found dead on Lundy Isle, in the Bristol 

 Channel, in 1829. One vv?as once discovered on a sand- 

 bank about 100 leagues from Newfoundland, but these 

 birds seem to have been rare visitants in America. 

 Although, according to ancient writers, Greenland was 



The Great Auk. 



particular species of the genus Aka. It is seven years 

 since the last was sold, and as the bird seems to be fast be- 

 coming, if it is not so already, as extinct as the Epioniis, the 

 Dinornis, and the oft-quoted Dodo, opportunities of ob- 

 taining these eggs must of necessity be few and far 

 between. The Great Auk has apparently not been seen 

 alive by any observer on whom reliance can be placed 

 for at least a quarter of a century, and prior to that, only 

 at rare intervals in exclusively Polar regions, although it 

 once was to be found in Iceland, Norway, Greenland, the 

 Feroe Isles, and occasionally in various parts of Great 



originally the home of this species, not a single specimen 

 has been seen there for very many years. In the 

 autumn of 1821, Dr. Fleming, in his cruise through the 

 Hebrides, observed and described one which had been 

 taken alive off St. Kilda, and a few years earlier another 

 specimen was seen off Papa Westra, Orkney Islands, 

 which for some time successfully eluded the efforts of a 

 six-oared boat to overtake it, its short wings, useless 

 though they were fur flight, forming most powerful 

 swimming organs. It was ultimately captured, and is 

 now in the British Museum. Morris, in his " History of 



