THE GREAT AUK. 



OUR illustration this month has a double 

 interest, because it represents a form 

 of bird life which can now be seen only in 

 pictures. The Great Auk, once so abund- 

 ant on the northern coast of America, no 

 longer exists. Not very long ago, when 

 your mother's grandmother was young, and 

 wore a poke-bonnet, it would have been no 

 difficult task to find Auk skins enough to 

 trim all the hats in America, but in our day 

 we can find not a single Auk. 



Naturalists and geologists, who find the 

 fossil bones of animals stored away in the 

 rocks, tell us of many forms of life which have 

 become extinct. Most of them have disap- 

 peared because of great earth changes and 

 unfavorable conditions quite beyond the 

 control of man. But the Great Auk, like 

 the Dodo of Mauritius and some other birds, 

 has wholly ceased to exist because exterm- 

 inated by the cruelty of man. Had its hu- 

 man foes been less wanton, the Great Auk 

 might still be numbered among American 

 sea birds. Its melancholy fate is an instance 

 of the destruction which might be wrought 

 upon other species of birds, if the plumage 

 hunters were unchecked. 



The Great Auk had neither means of de- 

 fense nor powers of flight. Its safety lay 

 in its home, which was on outlying rocky 

 islets and points of land, where there were 

 no large mammals that could injure it. Its 

 powers of swimming and diving gave it 

 safety from the eagles, the only winged 

 creatures which could successfully attack a 

 bird of such great size. As soon as civil- 

 ized man entered upon the scene, however, 

 the Great Auk's danger was apparent. 



The Great Auk — the representative of the 

 penguin in the northern seas — lived up to 

 the beginning of the eighteenth century, 

 without any serious diminution of its ranks. 

 That it was to some extent used as food by 

 various nations is quite certain, for its bones 



have been found in the shell heaps left by 

 coast dwelling tribes; but this did not af- 

 fect the supply. 



Up to a comparatively recent date a 

 general impression prevailed that the Great 

 Auk was a bird of the far north, and was 

 commonly found within the Arctic circle. 

 This does not appear to have been the case. 

 It was an inhabitant of the North Atlantic 

 Ocean, being abundant on small islands off 

 the coast of Iceland and Newfoundland, 

 but it is doubtful whether it ever occurred 

 except casually within the Arctic circle. It 

 has been said by Reinhardt that it was 

 found occasionally on the coast of Green- 

 land, and that one was killed on Disco 

 Island, in Davis' Strait, but later writers 

 are not disposed to credit these accounts. 

 However, it is clear that it was a bird capa- 

 ble of enduring a great degree of cold, for 

 being practically wingless it was no doubt 

 resident where hatched, or at all events 

 could not wander far from home in search 

 of a warmer climate. 



The old accounts of these birds — which 

 were known by a variety of names, such as 

 Wobble, Penguin, Moyack and Alke — speak 

 of them as being very abundant, and show 

 very clearly how readily they were destroyed. 

 Thus Captain Richard Whitbourne, of Ex- 

 mouth, Devonshire, England, in "A Dis- 

 covrse and Discovery of Nevv-fovnd-land," 

 printed in 1622, says: "These Penguins are 

 as bigge as Geese, and flye not, for they 

 haue but a little short wing; and they mul- 

 tiplie so infinitely, vpon a certain flat Hand, 

 that men driue them from thence vpon a 

 boord, into their boats by hundreds at a 

 time; as if God had made the innocency of 

 so poore a creature, to become such an ad- 

 mirable instrument for the sustentation of 

 man." 



A little later, in 1672, John Josselyn, 

 Gent., in a work on "New England Rari- 



