386 
FOREST AND STREAM 
the fall of 1808 saw great numbers feeding on the bottom 
of his seining ground at Grass Island in the Detroit river. 
He had a tine rnesh put in the bag of bis seine, and at a 
single haul, as near as he eonld compute, took, little and 
big, over 7,000 of these lizards; 2,000 of the largest were 
crammed “like pill boxes with white fish eggs." All wijd 
ducks are great spawn eaters, but their depredations will 
apply equally to the destruction of the eggs of both fishes 
under consideration: so that «we may look to the frog, 
water puppy, and water insects common to warm weather, 
as the special enemies of the mascalonge spawn. 
The State has made a small appropriation to he used in 
experimenting with this fish, numbers of which are now 
being placed In suitable pens to await the ripening period. 
The eggs separate and impregnate as readily as those of the 
trout. The fry feed equally well. What we want next is 
extei mination of the pickerel, and a law to protect the 
mascalonge. Then there is no reason why our marshy 
streams and estuaries should not, in a few years, team with 
this noble fish. Dr. E. Sterling." 
Salmon Breeding in Canada. —A dispatch from New¬ 
castle to the Toronto Mail , under date of July 11th, says of 
Mr. Samuel WHmot’s enterprise:—There is a splendid catch 
of salmon hereabouts, which is satisfactory evidence of 
Wilmot’s salmon breeding. Mr. Wilmot caused two nets 
to be set in Lake Ontario on Saturday last, a little to the 
west of Port Newcastle, and about a quarter of a mile on 
either side of the outlet of his creek. On Monday morn¬ 
ing twenty-one fine salmon were taken, and this morning 
twenty-two more were captured. These fish average in 
weight from seven to sixteen pounds. Many of them were 
sold here, the balance being shipped to the Toronto market. 
This handsome catch of fish in two days with only two 
nets, quite equals the palmiest days of salmon fishing in 
Lake Ontario thirty or forty years ago. Tills fact speaks 
volumes in itself in favor of fish breeding and fish protec¬ 
tion in our waters. 
More Connecticut Salmon.— The Hertford Times says 
that the Hon. Henry B. Harrison of New Haven, writes to 
Dr. Hudson, one of the fish commissioners, that he has 
just seen a salmon weighing eleven pounds. It was caught 
July 6th, in a pound at Clinton, at the mouth of the Con¬ 
necticut; and he informs Dr. Hudson of the fact, as an 
evidence of the good prospects of the success of the fish 
commissioners in their labors to restock the Connecticut 
with, that delicious fish. . 
43 #tarnl ]§i8torg. 
THE GREAT AUK. 
I N Forest and Stream, Vol. II, No. 16, 1 gave some ac 
count of that strange oceanic bird, now believed to he 
extinct, the Great Auk (Alca impennis). I mentioned that 
from all the evidence I had been able to collect, no speci¬ 
men of this bird had been seen around the coasts of New¬ 
foundland during the last thirty years. It is true that one 
is reported to have been picked up in 1853 in Trinity Bay, 
and another is said to have been taken by Captain Sterling 
in 1856, but both reports are doubtful. The great auk, I 
fear, must now be reckoned among the things that have 
been, though in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
they were to be seen in myriads on the low rocky islands 
of the eastern coast of this island, and immense flocks of 
them were encountered by the mariners of those days as 
far out as the Great Bank. Now the discovery of a single 
living specimen would be hailed as a wonderful event, and 
the captor would be reckoned a most fortunate man. 
There is still the hare possibility that on one or more of 
the islands off Eastern Labrador a few of the species may 
still exist, for these solitudes are never visited either by 
Beal hunter or cod-fisher. % There is no longer any hope 
that the bird might be found in Iceland. The last auk was 
shot on an isolated rock off the south coast of Iceland in 
1841, and is now in the Museum of Copenhagen. In 
Greenland, where, in the days of Egede, Cranz, and Fab- 
ricius it was so common, it is now extinct. The Royal 
Museum of Copenhagen has beeu for years offering a 
large reward among the Greenlanders for a specimen, but 
in vain. In his “Water Babies” Kingsley represents the 
last of the “gare fowl" or great auks standing on the “All- 
alone Stone,” and relating the sad story of the decline and 
downfall of its family, the crisis having been hastened by 
a volcanic eruption, in 1830, in which Gair-fowl’s-Kerry, 
an island off the coast of Iceland, on which the gare-fowl 
dwelt, wa9 swallowed up. It is worth notice that the name 
gare-fowl, given to the great auk, is of Norse and Iceland¬ 
ic origin, in which language it is named GeirJ'vge and 
Ooiful, and in Swedish Garfogel. Not only are living spec¬ 
imens in demand, hut the skeleton even of a departed auk 
is exceedingly rare and precious. In all the museums of 
Europe and America there are only seventy-two specimens 
of the bird, and about sixty-five eggs. Three of these 
specimens were found in Funk Island, off the northeastern 
coast of Newfoundland, in 1864. They came into the 
possession of Bishop Field, who forwarded one to Agas¬ 
siz, another to Professor Newton, of Cambridge, England, 
and the third ultimately reached the British Museum, 
where, I believe, there Is but one other specimen brought 
from the Oiknevs in ISIS*' 
This Funk Island is the only spot where, as far as is 
knowu at present, a search for skeletons of the bird is like¬ 
ly to be rewarded with success. In 1841, Peter Stuwitz, 
a Norwegian uaturalist, visited Funk Island, and there 
saw enormous heaps and skeletons of the great auk lyrng 
about. He took aw ay with him a quantity of these bones, 
which are now in the museum of Christiania. 
This island wo for unknown centuries one of the favorite 
resc.r'-j oi the • eat .uk, and probably is the one referred 
♦ a here la j't leu: i on»* rfieciman In the Smithsonian cabinet, another 
in the PhUatleJphm Acadtmv of Sciences, aiule third in the Girard cab¬ 
inet nt Va*#iir College. This last is the one from which Audubon made 
iila tkawing, and was caught on the banks of Newfoundland, 
to by Captain Whitbourne in the following extract from 
his book on Newfoundland, published In the reign of 
James I: “These Penguins are as bigge as Geese, and five 
not, for they have but a little short wing, and they multi¬ 
ply so infinitely upon a certain flat island that men drive 
them from thence upon a hoard into their boats by hun¬ 
dreds at a time, as if God had made the innocency of so 
poore a creature to become such an admirable instrument 
for the sustentation of man ” Funk Island corresponds 
to this description, being a low, flat, granitic rock, about 
half a miie in length and a quarter of a mile in breadth, 
lying thirty miles east of Cape Freels, buffetted by the 
stormy waves of the North Atlantic, so that only in very 
calm weather is it possible to land, for there is no cover or 
harbor. The soil is a dark-colored peat, and in many 
places consists almost wholly of the bones of sea fowl, 
chief among them being the bones of our subject. The 
island is uninhabited by roan, hut myriads of sea birds of 
every description cover its surface, and in the breeding 
season it is scarcely possible to move about without tread¬ 
ing on their eggs, so thickly are they spread over the sur¬ 
face. 
In 1874 two Englishmen visited Newfoundland, and at 
my suggestion they landed on Funk Island to search for 
bones of the great auk. They were only able to stay one 
hour as the wind began to rise, and with it the swell of 
the ocean. Mr. John Milne, one of these gentlemen, has 
since published a very interesting account of this visit, in 
which he tells us that his party were successful, in that 
short time, in finding bones which indicated the pre-exist¬ 
ence of at least fifty of these birds. These, however, were 
of such a fragmentary character that “it is probable they 
will hardly suffice to complete a perfect skeleton. The 
collection which has been made, notwithstanding its defi¬ 
ciencies, will nevertheless he sufficient to throw consider¬ 
able light on the osteology Of the bird. I understand 
that the collection has been placed iu the hands of Prof. 
Owen. The remains were found from one foot to two feet 
below the surface, and in some places even projected 
through the soil into the underground nests of the puffins. 
Mr. Milne says that “on none of the beaks does any trace 
of a horny covering remain, a covering which would most 
likely have resisted the attack of time longer than any 
other, from which fact, together with the general brown 
and aged appearance of portions it may he reasonably as¬ 
sumed that they were interred at a remote period.” The 
best description of the appearance of the great auk is con¬ 
tained in the English Pitot for 1774, as follows: “They 
never go beyond the bank as others do, for they are always 
on it or iu it, several of them together, sometimes more, 
sometimes less, but never less than two together. They 
are large fowls, about the size of a goose, a coal-black 
head and hack, with a white belly and a milk-white spot 
under one of their eyes, which nature has ordered to be 
under their right eye—an extraordinary mark. These 
birds never fly, for their wings are very short, and most 
like the fins of fish, having nothing upon them but a sort 
of down and short feathers.” It must have been a curious 
sight two hundred years ago to behold these wild, lonely 
islands around our shores, literally covered with the 
strange figures of these birds, as they waddled slowly 
about in an erect position, with their broad, webbed feet 
and short wings, resembling the flippers of a seal. These 
wings were not constituted for flight, hut were admirable 
paddles iu the water, enabling the bird to move, about even 
more swiftly tlnm the loon. The legs were extremely short 
but powerlul, and placed so much posteriorly that in rest¬ 
ing on the rocks the birds assumed an upright atliiuite, the 
whole of the leg and toes being applied to the surfacif 
The great auk is a Dative of the northern hemisphere, 
the penguin being its relative in the southern. Professor 
Oweu lias shown that it differed from the latter in the 
form of the beak and many other osteological details, and 
is so closely allied to the existing auks, guillemots ami 
puffins as to be classed with them in the same family, 
Alcidat, which is included in the order of Akseuks, or 
Swimming Birds, The causes of its extermination are 
not difficult to discover. Its short wiugs and peculiar 
conformation rendered it helpless on land, while its flesh 
and feathers were so valuable as to invite the rapacity of 
tits solitary egg was laid either la clefts of the rocks or la deep bur¬ 
rows, was five Inches Iona, and was covered with curious markings re¬ 
sembling Chinese characters.— Eu. 
man. There were few suitable breeding places, and when 
these were invaded it could not fly elsewhere, and had no 
choice but to die calmly. In the sharp “struggle for ex¬ 
istence" to which nature subjects her animated produc¬ 
tions, such a bird as the great auk must perish early. It 
was too innocent to hold its own in this rough world. Its 
cousin-german, the little auk, survives still, just because 
it had been favored with a greater development of wing, 
so as to make this an organ of flight. The razor-billed 
ank, another relative, also flourishes around these shores 
for the same reason; hut the places that knew the great 
auk shall know it no more forever. The dodo has shared 
the same fate; and we may perhaps ho inclined to join in 
the philosopher’s song— 
“The dodo is dead, so he cannot sing now. 
Yet why should a cloud overshadow oer brow?" 
It seems to me that a properly equipped expedition to 
Funk Island would be successful in securing many skele¬ 
tons of this extinct bird. If a party were to proceed 
there in July or August, and spend a few days on the 
island so as to make a thorough search, under the guidance 
of a person having some knowledge of the bird, so as to 
distinguish its bones from other remains, it. seems very 
irobable that very successful results would be reached. If 
u a single hour a hurried search was rewarded in the way 
I have described, in 1874, and if in 1864 a short explora¬ 
tion exhumed three perfect skeletons, what might we not 
anticipate from a prolonged search, especially as the area is 
so limited. At all events there is no other locality likely 
to yield such satisfactory returns to an explorer. 
ML Harvey. 
St, Johns, M. F., June VUh, 1876. 
THE BIRDS OF OUR SUBURBS. 
Our excellent friend, Mr. E. P. Bicknell, sends us a 
transcript from his diary during May at Riverdale, a beau¬ 
tiful village on the east side of the Hudson just below 
Yonkers. It seems to be a peculiarly favorable place for 
birds, such varieties as the cross-bill having been found 
breeding there, yet is not 20 miles from our office, and 
almost within the limits of New York City. It is not 
necessary to go a long distance to find facts in ornithology; 
it very often happens in birds, as in many other matters, 
that the best is nearest us. Mr. Bicknell writes as fol¬ 
lows:— 
May 1.—Cool; temperature39}“. Northwest wind and slight fall of 
May 30. -Cool; sooth wind in afternoon. Cat-bird and white-crowned 
sparrow (Zonolrichlu, leucophrys) noted. 
May 5th.—The wood ihrnsh has arrived; also the yellow warbler (Den - 
Uracil (estiva) and least flycatcher (Empidomix minimus). Buttercups 
in bloom, Warm south wind all day. veering to east in the afternoon- 
May 6.—Rain during the night, followed by a tine, fresh morning, en¬ 
livened by the song of the wood thrush from the dripping woods. The 
Baltimore oriole, bobolink and rilby-throated humming-bird were seen 
for the first time; all males. The orioles may generally be seen among 
the scarlet blossoms of the Pyms japonica on their first arrival; as well 
as the bummiog-birds. Trees and vegetation have made rapid progress 
toward their summer dre.-s during the day; pear trees utc in blossom. 
May 7.—Very warm; temperature reached 87“ on the north side of the 
buure. Conspicuous among the arrivuls are the great-crested flycatcher 
(Mywrchus ainilus), king bird (Tyranms carolinensis) and yellow- 
breasted chat ( Icteriu sirens). The three viroSs, (F. noveboracensis, 
jimtfrom and gilvus), tbo Maryland yellow-throat ( (Imthylpis Iriclws) aud 
solitary tattler (Tetanus solUarlus) are also here. A few apple and 
dogwood blossoms out. Saw two water auakes about 3} feet in length, 
and several dragon flies. 
May 8.—Southerly wind, partly cloudy. Another very warm day. 
Innumerable warblers have arrived during the mght, and the woods and 
trees are now alive with them. Among the now arrivals I noticed the 
black poll warbler (Dendmca siruUa), prairie warbler (V. discolor), 
chestnut-sided (D. pennsylvanica), blue winged yellow (llelmihlkop- 
huga pintle ) and the water thrush ( Seiurus tioveboracensis) . Shot a 
rose-breasted grosbeak (Goniapnea tudoviciuna) which are very uncom¬ 
mon here, rarely more thau one or two being seen every year; hereto¬ 
fore the first arrivals hare invariably been males. 
May 10.—Saw oue scarlet tanager (Pyranga rubra) and a male orchard 
oriole ( Icterus sgmrius) in immature plumage, and a black-tbrouted blue 
warbler ( Dendrceca catrule&cens). 
May 11.—Clear: north to west winds. Olive-backed thrush ( Tardus 
Swainsonl) abundant; Bluckhornian ( Dendrosca Blackburniie), black and 
yellow (D. maculosa) aud Cape Slay (/>. tigrina) warblers all made their 
first appearance. 
May 12.- Several Nashville warblers (llelminthophaga rujicapilla). 
Robin’s nest with two eggs; this Is the first day I have heard the call of 
the'cpiail. 
May 13. -Worm-eating warbler (IhlniUhtrnr vet'itilvorus), ereen black- 
capped dycatcaing warbler (ifylodiocles pusillio), and bittern ( Botaurus 
minor); and a Hock of about 135 white-bellied swallows (Tachyctneta 
bicolor). 
May 15.—Cloudy all day with east wind. Red-eyed vireo (Yireo ollva- 
ceus) and bay-breasted warbler (Dendrceca castanea) noted. The hooded 
flycutching warbler (Afytodioctes uAtratus) has made its appearance in a 
piece ot woodland, where it is generally common; its presence is be¬ 
trayed by its lively notes. 
May 18.—Wood pewee ( CoiUopus Virens) first heard this morning. 
Wood thrushes and red-winged blackbirds are building. 
May 17.—The bine-winged yellow warbler aud wood pewee are moving 
about with bnilding materials. The ludlgo-blrd (Oyanoeplea cyunea), 
one of our latest migrants, appeared to-day. 
May 10.—A brood of five bine-birds are able to fly. 
May 20.—Canada flycatching warbler (Myiodiacles canadensis); yellow- 
winged woodpecker’s nest, fonr eggs. Azaleas in blossom. 
May 21.— Least bittern (Aidea egretta) seen; nest or chipping spar¬ 
row wllb two eggs; first egg of the cow bird this season fonnd iu best 
of the Phcebe-blrd. 
May 23—Clear; strong west wind during the night. Several Tennss- 
Bee warblers (HelmirdAopkaga psregrma ) noted Heard the notes of 
the Acadian flycatcher (Empidonox acadicue), a few of which are with 
us every summers, iu three pieces of shady woods. Found a cow-bird’s 
egg in the empty nest of a cat-nird. 
May 33—Cloudy; cool: high wind from thn northeast. JJsndractt 
eastanea abundant, aud D. cestiva building. The cow-bird’s egg which 
yesterday encemhered the nest of the cat-bird is missing to-day, and an 
egg of the rightful owner substituted. 
May 25.—Several Traill's flycatcUets (Empidonox TraillH) nollced 
near swampy ground; they appear to have a great preference for elm 
trees. Yellow-winged sparrows ( Cotunriculuepasserines) seen for first 
time this season. 
May 25.—Nest of tbe Spicella pusllla containing two eggs. The Mary¬ 
land yellow-throats are building. 
May 28 —Mourning warbler (Geothylpis Philadelphia) seen; tbe only 
one noted tills spring; a single epeoimeu was also seen last spring, the 
date being May 2&1. 
May 30.—Shot a fine male specimen of the Kentucky warbler ( Opotor■ 
nis formosue) in fall song. Nests of the Wilson's thrush, with Lhree 
eggs, of the brown thrasher, oa the ground, with four eggs, and of Ui 
