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Lucas, Notes on the Great Auk. 
Lucas, Notes on the Great Auk. 
[July 
GREAT AUK NOTES. 
BY FREDERIC A. LUCAS. 
Ornithologists owe a debt of gratitude to Professor New¬ 
ton and Mr. Grieve for their contributions to the history of the 
Great Auk, and for their labors in collecting and rendering 
accessible to English and American readers the substance of 
many scattered papers by foreign writers. Well as their work 
has been done a few errors, here and there, have crept in, and 
in correcting them, as they come up in connection with some of 
the points herein discussed, the writer trusts that he may not seem 
ungracious, for few have probably studied the writings of the 
above-named gentlemen with more pleasure and profit than 
himself. 
To Professor Newton belongs the credit of calling attention to 
the fact that the range of the Great Auk was much more re¬ 
stricted than was generally supposed, and that the bird never 
even visited many of the localities in which it was once thought 
to have bred. 
It is my own belief that, in historic times at least, the number 
of places resorted to by the Great Auk for breeding purposes 
was comparatively small, partly from the inability of the bird to 
fly, but more from one of those unknown reasons which impel 
some animals to select for their homes only one or two out of 
many possible sites. 
We have a striking example of this in the Gannet, a bird 
whose powers of flight are exceptionally great, and whose con¬ 
siderable size and voracious appetite demand an abundant supply 
ot fish. It might therefore be supposed that this bird would be 
found breeding at many places from Maine to Labrador, and yet, 
so far as I am aware, it is found at only two spots in all this range 
of coast, and to one of these we know certainly that it has resorted 
for three hundred and fifty years* in spite of almost ceaseless per¬ 
secution. . 1 
If then such is the case with a bird gifted with unusual powers 
of locomotion how much more likely it is to have been the habit 
*In 'The Auk' for April, by an unfominate slip of feTpen, I wro^to^h^d^d 
and thirty-two instead of three hundred and fifty-three. 
| 
I 
188S.] 
279 
of a bird so hampered by nature as the Great Auk. It is also 
worthy of note that traditions concerning the Great Auk refer to 
a small number of localities only, and moreover had the bird 
availed itself of the many possible breeding places along the 
coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador it might have endured in 
lessened numbers until this day. 
There is a rumor that twenty years ago the Great Auk was 
still to be found on the Penguin Islands, in the mouth of Gros 
Water Bay, sixteen miles from Grady Harbor, a locality about 
two hundred and fifty miles north of Cape Norman, N. F.* Of 
course this is possible, but it seems hardly probable. 
It was on the program, during the cruise of the Fish Com¬ 
mission schooner ‘Grampus,’ in the summer of 18S7 (a ciuise 
in which it was my good fortune to take part), to visit as many 
of the probable former breeding grounds of the Great Auk as 
circumstances would admit of, notably Penguin Island near Cape 
la Hune (southern coast of Newfoundland), and Penguin Islands 
near Cape Freels (eastern coast). Unfortunately MIolus decided 
against a visit to the former locality — so often mentioned by the 
early navigators — and let loose upon us a brisk southwester, 
before which the ‘Grampus’ drove by under shortened canvas at 
the rate often knots an hour, while, with a visit to Funk Island 
still in prospect, it was deemed inadvisable to lose any time by 
waiting for wind and sea to go down. 
On the eastern coast we were favored with better weather, and 
leaving the well-named harbor of Seldom Come By early in the 
morning, with a ‘Newfoundland Pilot’ (a lookout at the mast¬ 
head) to guard against the possible contingency of a rock not 
laid down on the chart, passed Peckford Reef, the Schoolmarm, 
and Scrub Rocks, and came to anchor about noon oft' the Pen¬ 
guin Islands, two flat, grassy islets rising but twenty feet above 
the water and not at all suggestive of an Alcine breeding place. 
Still one of these may be that certain flat island whence men 
“drave the Penguins on a board into their boats by hundreds at 
a time,” in spite of the fact that the islets are but three miles 
from shore, and in consequence the Great Auk must have led 
a very precarious existence. 
Offer Wadham, nine miles farther out to sea, is much more 
*For this report I am indebted to Mr. William Sclater of St. Johns, N. F. 
