THE BIRD BOOK 
33. Gr eat Auk. Plautus impennis. 
Range. — Formerly the whole of the North At- 
lantic coasts. Now extinct. 
These great auks formerly dwelt in large num- 
bers on the islands of the North Atlantic, but 
owing to their lack of the powers of flight and 
the destructiveness of mankind, the living bird 
has disappeared from the face of the earth. 
Although they were about thirty inches in length, 
their wings were even smaller than those of the 
Razor-billed Auk, a bird only eighteen inches in 
length. Although breeding off the coast of New- 
foundland, they appeared winters as far south as 
Virginia, performing their migration by swim- 
ming alone. The last bird appears to have been 
taken in 1844, and Funk Island, off the coast of 
Newfoundland, marks the place of their disap- 
pearance from our shores. There are about sev- 
enty known specimens of the bird preserved, and 
about the same number of eggs. The immediate 
cause of the extinction of these birds was their 
destruction for food by fishermen and immigrants, 
and later for the use of their feathers commercial- 
Dovekie " k ly. The single egg that they laid was about 5.00 x 3 
inches, the ground color was buffy white, and the shpots brownish and black- 
ish. The markings varied in endless pattern as do those of the smaller Auk. 
There are but two real eggs (plaster casts in imitation of the Auks eggs are 
to be found in many collections) in collections in this country, one in the 
Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia, and the other in the National 
Museum, at Washington. Through the kindness of Mr. Witmer Stone, of the 
Academy of Natural Science, we are enabled to soliw a full-sized reproduction 
from a photograph of the egg in their collection. 
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