402 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



dently refers to the Great Auk, although there are some 

 discrepancies in the account, which may have been due in 

 part to lapse of memory and in part to the translator; a later 

 passage evidently refers to Murres, Razor-billed Auks and 

 Gannets. Funk Island, apparently the location referred to, 

 was probably the principal breeding place of the Great Auk 

 in America, situated some thirty miles off the northeast coast 

 of Newfoundland. Cartier also gives evidence of having met 

 with the Great Auk in large numbers, at the Bird Rocks in 

 the Gulf of St. Lawrence on May 25, 1534;^ but there seems 

 to be no other record of the occurrence of this bird at those 

 islands. In 1535 he again called at Funk Island. In his 

 account he gives its latitude and longitude, and says : " This 

 Island is so full of birds, that all might easily have bene 

 fraighted with them, and yet for the great number that there 

 is, it would not seeme that any were taken away. We, to 

 victuall ourselves, filled two boats of them." ^ 



In 1536 Capt. Robert Hore records another "Penguin 

 Island" to the southward of Newfoundland. From the course 

 steered from Cape Breton, the island must have been Penguin 

 Island, off Cape La Hume.^ 



Evidently the bird became known very early among the 

 fishermen and fowlers as the Penguin (French Pingouin). Pro- 

 fessor Newton says that he considers it probable that this 

 name might have been derived from Pinwing, a name until 

 recent years used in Newfoundland, and denoting a pinioned 

 or flightless bird. The name " Penguin " appears to have been 

 applied originally to the Great Auk, and later to the group 

 of birds in the southern hemisphere now known as Penguins. 

 There are several islands known as Penguin islands near 

 Newfoundland, one in particular off Cape Freels, on the 

 eastern coast.* 



Anthonie Parkhurst, writing in 1578, speaks of " one island 



1 Burrage, Henry S., ed.: Early English and French Voyages, Am. Hist. Asso., 1906, p. 13. 



2 Ihii., p. 38. 



3 Ibid., p. 107. 



* In Hakluyt'a Voyages, third volume, there is a statement made by Sir George Peckham, in 

 his account of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's voyage to Newfoundland, which gives credit to Madock 

 ap Owen Gwyneth for the discovery, and naming of " Pengwin Island " in " the yeere of our Lord 

 God 1170." If this is founded on fact, the Welshman long antedated Columbus, and the name 

 Penguin may be of Welsh origin. 



