i6 
Lost British Birds. 
himself more than by all the melody and laughter-like cries 
of woods and groves. 
This species, although so highly esteemed for the table, 
was in one way more favoured by nature than the con¬ 
spicuous avocet: the russet-brown and mottled plumage of 
the male, and dun colour of the female, were in a measure 
protective, while the bird was of a shy, retiring disposition 
and semi-nocturnal in its feeding habits. According to 
Stevenson, its extermination in Norfolk may be said to have 
occurred between the years 1829 and 1835. He adds : “ It 
seems probable, however, that during the next twenty years 
a pair or two occasionally returned to the old haunts in 
the spring, though only to be robbed of their eggs or shot 
down for their rarity.” 
VII. Great Auk —Alca impennis. The Great Auk, or 
Garefowl, as it was called in the Western Islands of Scot¬ 
land, is the only species in this obituary which has not only 
ceased to be a British bird, but is altogether extinct. 
There is a large amount of literature about it, which is not 
strange considering the great size of the bird, exceeding 
that of the goose, its wide range in the North Atlantic, and 
its importance, while it lasted, as an article of food, first to 
barbarous tribes and afterwards to Europeans, who were 
also, in a sense, barbarians. On the hither side of the 
ocean it once inhabited the coast from Finisterre to the 
North Cape, but in historical times it was most abundant on 
the other side of the Atlantic. Its fate in that region may 
be briefly narrated—it is not a pleasant story. As long 
ago as the middle of the sixteenth century the sailors who 
visited Newfoundland to fish on the banks there, began the 
stupid war of destruction. In their breeding-places the 
birds were quite tame—tamer, in fact, than our tamest 
domestic animals—and could be slaughtered without trouble 
by the crews. But eventually it was found to be too 
troublesome a task to go on shore, knock the birds down 
with clubs, then carry their carcases to the ships. Cart- 
