8124 



Birds. 



to be about the real number. Of these a large portion went to the 

 Royal Museum at Copenhagen, as is stated by the late Etatsraad 

 Reinhardt (loc. cit.) ; a good many more passed into the hands of 

 Herr Brandt, whose son informed Mr. Wolley that, in or since the year 

 1835, his father had had nine eggs, and I suppose birds to match. 

 Two eggs were also purchased by a certain Snorri Ssemonasson then 

 living at Keblavik, but what became of them I do not know. I have 

 also learnt, on undoubted authority, that the late Herr Mechlenburg 

 has had in all eight birds and three eggs.* From this naturalist, in 

 April, 1844, Mr. John Hancock, by the intervention of Mr. John 

 Sewell, of Newcastle, received a bird and an egg, which are now in 

 his collection, with the information that they were taken together with 

 another bird and another egg, a year or two previously, on an island 

 " at the north-east side of Iceland." A wrong locality was probably 

 furnished on purpose to mislead Herr Mechlenburg ; but the fact of 

 his never having had more than three eggs, of which two came into 

 his possession in, or shortly before, the year 1844, entirely disposes of 

 Dr. Kjaerbolling's assertion to which I have before alluded. f Thus it 

 is pretty evident that most of the specimens of the great auk and its 

 eggs which now exist in collections were obtained from Eldey between 

 the years 1830 and 1844. % 



From what has been already stated, it will be seen how great 

 Mr. Wolley's industry in collecting information was ; yet 1 must add 

 a few more words. In former days, the gare-fowls were, in summer 

 time, so constantly observed in the sea by the fishermen, that their 

 appearance was thought but little of. The people from Kyrkjuvogr 

 and Sudrnes used to begin to see them when they arrived off Hafna- 

 berg, and from thence to Reykjanes rost. We were told by many 

 people that they swam with their heads much lifted up, but their 

 necks drawn in ; they never tried to flap along the water, but 

 dived as soon as alarmed.' On the rocks they sat more upright than 



* Herr Pastor W. Passler bas some remarks on these in the ' Journal fur Orni- 

 thologie,' 1860, p. 59. 



f The additions which, in the last edition of his work, Mr. Yarrell made to his 

 account of this bird (B. B. 3rd ed. vol. iii. pp. 482-3), are copied from Mr. Lloyd's 

 * Scandinavian Adventures' (ii. pp. 496-7), having been originally taken from Dr. 

 Kjaerbolling's book, and are very inaccurate. 



% Lists of these, which are in the main correct, though I know of a few that are 

 omitted, have lately appeared in the 'Zoologist' for the present year (Zool. 7353, 

 7386), and almost simultaneously in the 'Field' newspaper (Nos. 423 and 424, 

 pp. 93, 114. Further remarks on them will be found in the former journal (Zool. 

 7;i87, 743H). 



