200 BULLETIN 107, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
the razor-billed auk in what was then the most southern outpost of its 
breeding range, from which it has since retreated. As we ap- 
proached the ledge, after a five-hours’ sail from Grand Manan, sev- 
eral eiders flew off and a cloud of herring gulls arose; and, never 
having seen at that time any of the great breeding grounds of the 
Alcidae, we were particularly interested to see a number of black 
birds, with white breasts, standing on the rock, which we knew were 
razor-billed auks. As they began flying off their numbers were in- 
creased by others scrambling out from the rocks, until we estimated 
that at least a hundred had left the island; when we landed not 
one was to be found, but when we concealed ourselves among the 
rocks they began flying back over the ledge singly or in small 
flocks. We lost no time in hunting for their eggs, some of which 
were in plain sight under the rocks; all of them were in sheltered 
places and most of them were so well hidden in remote and dark 
crevices under the large, loose rocks, that after two or three hours 
of hard work, crawling into all sorts of holes and crevices, and 
feeling for the eggs with a long-handled net, we succeeded in col- 
lecting only 37 eggs. The eggs were laid on the bare rock, a single 
egg in each case. This was an interesting experience for us at the 
time, as every new experience is, but it is also worth mentioning 
here as a record of conditions that have passed ; the breeding grounds 
of our larger, wilder, and shyer birds.are gradually becoming more 
and more restricted through persecution and with the advance of 
civilization. The razor-billed auk undoubtedly once bred still far- 
ther south, or west, along the coast of Maine; Knight (1908). says 
“there is a dimly verified statement that some 50 years ago or more 
it nested as far south as the Cranberry Islands.” It is said to have 
bred near Grand Manan as recently as 1897, six years after my visit. 
But the story of its decrease does not end here; it has been sadly 
depleted in numbers much farther north. On Funk Island, off the 
coast of Newfoundland, the razor-billed auk, together with several 
other species of sea birds, once bred abundantly, but frequent and 
‘persistent raids, at which the birds were killed for their feathers or 
for bait and their eggs gathered in large numbers for food, finally 
reduced these populous colonies to a pitiful remnant. Mr. William 
Palmer (1890), who visited Funk Island in 1887, writes of it as 
follows: 
It is easy to imagine what must have been the abundance of these birds in 
former years on this lonely, almost inaccessible ocean island. Great auks, 
murtes, razorbills, puffins, Arctic terns, gannets, and perhaps other species un- 
doubtedly swarmed, each species having its own nesting ground, and never 
molested except by an occasional visit from the now extinct Newfoundland red 
man; but now, since the white fisherman began to plunder this, to them, food 
and feather giving rock, how changed: To-day, but for the Arctic terns (which 
