Birds. 6887 



record is that of a specimen now in the Dublin University Museum, 

 which was taken in May, 1834, on the coast of Waterford. The bird 

 was first seen close to the yaul of a fisherman, and apparently in a 

 starved condition ; for on his holding out some sprats to it, it came 

 close to the boat for them. This may, however, have been only that 

 the bird was so little acquainted with man, and quite corresponds 

 with the ancient accounts of its stupid character. Another bird of the 

 species, probably the male of this, was shortly afterwards procured in 

 the same locality, but was not preserved. 



In Northern and North-eastern Europe the great auk is equally 

 rare. According to Benicke, a specimen of the great auk was shot in 

 1794, in the harbour of Kiel, in Holstein ; and in 1838 another bird 

 of the species was killed in the neighbourhood of Freidrikstadt. It 

 seems almost certain, too, that in J 848 a great auk was shot on the 

 Island of Wardoe, within the Arctic circle, by one of the peasants 

 there. It is possible that this bird formerly even bred in Denmark, 

 for portions of its skeleton have been found and recognised in the 

 so-called " Kjokken Moddinger," the remnants of the repasts of the 

 aborigines of that country. The bird seems, therefore, in former 

 times, to have been widely distributed on the Atlantic coasts ; but its 

 principal habitat was undoubtedly on the eastern coasts of Newfound- 

 land and Labrador. Possibly, in earlier times, it was much more 

 numerous on the eastern shores of the great Atlantic Ocean ; but, on 

 the other hand, the few scattered individuals that have appeared on 

 our shores, and in the Faroe and Orkney Isles, may have been origi- 

 nally driven by stress of weather from the American coast, and 

 have settled down on the rocks that they had taken refuge on. On 

 the Newfoundland fishing-banks the great auk was two centuries ago 

 to be found in great abundance. Its appearance was always hailed 

 by the mariner approaching that desolate coast as the first indication 

 of his having reached soundings on the fishing-banks. During the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries these waters, as well as the Ice- 

 land and Faroe coasts, were annually visited by hundreds of ships 

 from England, France, Spain, Holland and Portugal; and these ships 

 actually were accustomed to provision themselves with the bodies and 

 eggs of these birds, which they found breeding in myriads on the low 

 islands off the coasts of Newfoundland. Besides the fresh birds con- 

 sumed by the ships' crews, many tons were salted down for further 

 use. In the space of an hour, these old voyagers tell us, they could 

 fill thirty boats with the birds. It was only necessary to go on shore, 

 armed with sticks, to kill as many as they chose. The birds were so 



