
540 THE GREAT AUK. 
the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. * 
"Degraded as it were from the feathered rank (said Nuttall), 
and almost numbered with the amphibious monsters of the 
deep, the Auk seems condemned to dwell alone in those 
desolate and forsaken regions of the earth.” But it was an 
unrivalled diver, and swam with great velocity. One chased 
by Mr. Bullock among the Northern Isles, left a six-oared 
boat far behind. It was undoubtedly a match for the 
Oxfords. It was finally shot, however, and is now in the 
British Museum. “It is observed by seamen,” wrote Buffon 
a hundred years ago, "that it is never seen out of sound- 
ings, so that its appearance serves as an infallible direc- 
tion to the land.” It fed on fishes and marine plants, and 
laid either in the clefts of the rocks or in deep burrows a 
solitary egg, five inches long, with curious markings, resem- 
bling Chinese characters. The only noise it was known to 
utter was a gurgling sound. Once very abundant on both 
shores of the North Atlantic, it is now believed to be entirely 
extinct, none having been seen or heard of alive since 1844, 
when two were taken near Iceland.t 
The death of a species is a more remarkable event than v 
end of an imperial dynasty. In the words of Darwin, “ 
fact in the long history of the world is so startling as the 
wide and repeated extermination of its inhabitants." What 
an epoch will that moment be when the last man shall give 
up the ghost! The upheaval or subsidence of strata, ihe: en- 
croachments of other animals, and climatal revolutions— by 
which of these great causes of extinction now slowly but 
Pee odo 

* Audubon records the A that formerly ** Penguins were plentiful hae 
- Nahant and some other islands in the bay.” per the old gunner, who gave e him 
- information, must have meant da poscis id 
— (That the Great Auk was once very abundant on our Pes England shores, i s proved be * pen 
doubt 'the Ard number of its bones that Dos been found in t the ancient * *Shellhea vo i told 
tered he coast from British America to Massachusetts, The * oa pam w 
Audubon its been found at Na hant, was undoubtedly correet in pe pie pe 
have bones of the. species taken trom m Shellheaps of Marblehead, Eagle n in pawi swich 
Plumb Island, and Mr. Elliot Cabo hat an old fishe vindi CDM me ich, from 
described a bird to bim. that eka captured by oiya father in Ipswich many years ago. W rj 
the deseription, Mr. Cabot was convineed was a specimen of t. the Gr eat Auk.— =F. Wa 
ds f Owen makes this singular mistake: i e camis last century ; 


