8110 



Birds. 



the great auk " vit et se trouve habituellement sur les glaces flottantes 

 du pole arctique, dont il ne s'eloigne qu'accidentellement" (Man. 

 d'Orn. ii. 940), were entirely contrary to fact. There is, I believe, but 

 one reliable instance on record of the gare-fowl* having occurred 

 within the limits of the arctic circle. This is the example said to 

 have been killed on Disco in 1821, and which, after changing hands 

 several times, is now in the University Museum at Copenhagen. The 

 fact has been for the first time recorded in the ' Ibis' (1861, p. 15), 

 and my friend Professor Reinhardt there expresses his belief that 

 " the accounts of other instances, in which the bird is said to have 

 been obtained in Greenland, are hardly to be confided in."t 



There is, I take it, nothing which should really lead us to infer that 

 the great auk ever visited Spitsbergen. X The first English writer to 

 whom I can trace the report is Mr. Selby (Brit. Orn. ii. p. 433) ; and 

 that distinguished ornithologist has lately most kindly informed me 

 that the making mention of that locality was a mistake, which would 

 have been rectified had another edition of his work been required. 

 As to Norway, the only supposed instance of its occurring there 

 within the arctic circle is that mentioned by Professor Steenstrup 

 (1. c. p. 95, n.), and is doubtful enough. Herr Laurenz Brodtkorb, 

 of Wardoe, in 1855, told Mr. Wolley, repeating the story afterwards 

 in my presence, that in 1848 he shot a large diving bird, of which he 

 did not know the name, on a flat rocky skerry off Reenoe. He felt 

 very certain that it was not a great northern diver (Colymbus glacialis) ; 

 but he assured us that its beak was like a guillemot's {Uria), that is, 

 narrow and pointed, and not like a razorbill's (Alca), thick and trun- 

 cated. He was equally sure that there were still a pair or two of his 

 species to be found among the guillemots which breed on this spot. 

 Mr. Wolley, in a letter I received from him about this time (1855), 

 naively remarks, " I could not see one ; but some of the birds were 

 off their eggs ;" and 1 feel bound to say that, though Herr Brodtkorb 



* It may seem somewhat pedantic to revive this ancient and almost-forgotten 

 name. In using it I am chiefly influenced by the fact that Mr. Wolley had intended 

 to have employed it. 



f I have spoken of the above as a " reliable instance" of an arctic great auk ; but 

 I am not sure that even this is free from doubt ; for in a letter Professor Bernhardt 

 tells me he has " had some suspicion" whether the reported Disco specimen of 1821 

 has not been confounded with one asserted by the late lamented Governor Holboll 

 (Kioyer's ' Tidsskrift,' iv. p, 457) to have been obtained at Fiskernoes (South Green- 

 land) in 1815. If this suspicion be correct, the gare-fowl has probably never once 

 occurred within the arctic circle. 



\ Cf. ' Jbis,' 1851), pp. 173, 174. 



