GREAT AUK. 
469 
NA TA TORES. 
ALCADjE. 
GREAT AUK. 
Alga impennis. 
PLATE GXXIX. 
It is much to be feared and regretted, if true, that the 
Great Auk must now be spoken of, like the Dodo, as a 
species that existed once, but exists no longer. Since 
the days of ornithological literature it has been a rare 
bird, but must have very suddenly decreased in numbers 
within a few years; we know little further with regard 
to this species, than that it was once an inhabitant of 
more northern regions than our own, and that a stray 
specimen has once or twice reached our shores. 
Martin,—who visited St. Kilda a hundred years ago,— 
at the head of his list of the sea-fowl which inhabit the 
island, mentions this species under the name of gairfowl, 
as the “stateliest as well as the largestand says that it 
lays its egg, which is twice as big as that of a solan goose, 
upon the bare rock ; that it “ is variously spotted black, 
green, and dark; it comes without regard to wind; ap¬ 
pears the 1st of May, and goes away about the middle of 
June;" so that it must have been much earlier in its 
habits than any of the allied species, and was departing 
with its young ones upon a long and mysterious sea- 
voyage, when they had only just begun to sit. It is 
also interesting to notice that green is spoken of as part 
