Birds. 6885 



Wovmianum is, on the whole, pretty accurate, with the exception of 

 the ring round the neck ; and it is probably the only drawing that has 

 been taken from the living bird. His specimen, when drawn, was 

 evidently in summer plumage, for in winter the black colour of the 

 throat and fore-neck is replaced by white. According to Benicke, a 

 writer in Oken's ' Isis' for 1824 (p. 88), the eye-spot becomes, in win- 

 ter, of a dark brown, interspersed with a few white feathers. The spe- 

 cimen in the Museum of Natural History is undoubtedly an immature 

 bird : it belongs to the old Wycliff Museum ; but no record has been 

 preserved of where it was obtained. Friedrich Faber, in his excel- 

 lent 'Monograph of the Birds of Iceland,' published in 1822, at 

 Copenhagen, states that, during his three years' residence in Iceland, 

 he was never able to meet with a single specimen. 



Faber's work has unfortunately never been published in the English 

 language, though the late Professor Jameson, of Edinburgh, long ago 

 told us that he had translated it, and we ourselves prepared another 

 version of it more than twenty years ago, which has remained in 

 MS. ever since. " According to native accounts, the Geirfugi, or 

 great auk, formerly bred upon two isolated rocks to the south of Ice- 

 land. One of these lies about fourteen miles to the south of the 

 Westmann Isles ; and the other, on which the bird was said to have 

 been much more plentiful, is the first of three rocks off the projecting 

 point of Rekjanes, on the south-west of Iceland, and about twenty 

 English miles from the land." 



Eggert Olafsen, in his ' Travels in Iceland ' (p. 983), accurately 

 describes the great auk, and indicates its two breeding-places, adding 

 that when he was upon Vidoe two boats went off to the Reykianes 

 Rock, and brought him both the birds and the eggs. This was in the 

 year 1770, or thereabouts. " For a long time," continues Faber, " the 

 Icelanders have relinquished the dangerous voyage to the Geirfugi 

 Skjaer, as it could only be attempted, with any chance of success, in 

 the calmest weather, and even then a man had to spring from the boat 

 on to the rock, with a rope round his body, by which, after searching 

 the islet, he was dragged off again through the ever-boiling waves." 



In the summer of 1821 Faber hired a fishing yacht at Reykiavik, 

 and, along with a Danish merchant and a Swedish Count, reached 

 the rocks off Reykianes on the 25lh of June. For two days they 

 cruised off these dangerous skerrys, and once accomplished a landing, 

 though the Count narrowly escaped with his life, having fallen be- 

 tween the boat and the rocks when attempting to leap on shore. 

 There was not, however, a single bird of this species to be seen ; and 



