565 



the sea south of Iceland, especially on one four ( = thirty English) miles from the land off the 

 outermost south-western point of Reykjanes, whither the natives used annually, for more than 

 a hundred years, to make expeditions to capture the hirds, taking large numbers of them and 

 their eggs. In 1813, men in a vessel from the Faeroes landed there and obtained many, of which 

 twenty-four were taken to Rejkjavik. Faber when at Lautrabjerg was told by a peasant that he 

 killed seven on a rock in 1814 ; and a peasant on the Westman Islands informed him that in or 

 about the year 1800 he obtained a Great Auk with its egg at a breeding-place there. A few years 

 after 1820, when Faber had in vain sought for this bird, two were killed on a rock at Oerebakke, 

 and sent to the Copenhagen Museum by Count Moltke. Another was sent in 1828 from Eejkjavik ; 

 and again in October 1830 a skin and an egg were sent to the museum by Count Moltke, who 

 wrote saying that a volcanic eruption had destroyed the island where the Gare-fowls bred, and 

 that a pair which had taken up their quarters on an island (Eldey) nearer the land had been 

 killed, one of these being the one he sent, but that he could not trace the other. Between 

 that year (1830) and 1844, as appears by Wolley's researches, not fewer than sixty birds were 

 killed on this island, and perhaps a good many more. A large portion of them went to the 

 Museum at Copenhagen, and others to Mr. Brandt, of Hamburg, and thus were distributed to 

 the various museums of Europe. The two last examples known to have been obtained on 

 Eldey were killed in 1844, and, having been skinned in Iceland, were sent with their bodies in 

 spirit to Professor Eschricht at Copenhagen. 



In the Faeroes it most certainly has not been met with for many years. Captain H. W- 

 Feilden, who in his notes on the birds of those islands (Zool. s. s. p. 3280), gives very full details 

 of the various records of this bird as far as they are concerned, says that he spoke to an old man, 

 Jan Hansen, then eighty-one years of age, believed to be the last man who remembers seeing a 

 Gare-fowl in Fseroe, who told him that one was caught on the 1st July 1808. 



It has been recorded from the coasts of Norway by several authors ; but, according to 

 Professor Newton and Mr. Collett, the stories of its presence there break down on investigation. 

 The only reported instance of its occurrence in Sweden is that by GMmann, at the end of the 

 last century, to Pennant, of one said to have been killed off Marstrand. Another is said by 

 Benicken to have been shot in Kiel harbour in the year 1790. 



According to Degland (Orn. Eur. ii. p. 529) three examples were killed about 1800 or 1810 

 off the coast of Cherbourg; but both here and in another place he misquotes the evidence of 

 Hardy (Annuaire Normand, 1841, p. 298), and the whole statement is open to doubt. 



In the Newfoundland seas and the Gulf of St. Lawrence the Gare-fowl used formerly to be 

 abundant ; and Professor Newton says, " The fact is incontestable that its breeding-stations in 

 the western part of the Atlantic were for three centuries regularly visited and devastated with 

 the combined object of furnishing food or bait to the fishermen." Mr. John Milne in 1874 

 visited Funk Island, one of the former resorts of the Gare-fowl in the Newfoundland seas, and 

 published in the 'Field' newspaper (27th March, 3rd and 10th April 1875) an account of his 

 visit, which was richly rewarded, for he brought away with him remains belonging to no fewer 

 than fifty birds. 



According to a list published by Professor Newton, corrected up to 1871, there appear to 

 be about seventy-one skins, nine complete skeletons, and sixty-five eggs of this bird known to 



