THE GREAT AUK. 
885 
inhospitable northern coasts of America and Asia, it has 
been just as little noticed. In olden times the Great 
Auk was met with far more to the southward : it is said 
to have bred regularly on St. Kilda, and occasionally on 
the Faroe Islands, but it has never revisited these islands 
of late years. In 1818 the crew of a vessel, sailing between 
Faroe and Iceland, came upon a flock of these birds on 
the south side of the island, which is to this day called, 
after the Great Auk, “ Geirfuglkjar” (Icelandic, Geirfugl ): 
there they found a colony of twenty of these birds, and, 
landing in a boat, caught them all on their eggs, and 
brought them to Reykjavik, where they stuffed some and 
ate the remainder. The following year eight of these 
birds were seen on the western side of the island; these 
were likewise all killed, except one; and in subsequent 
years occasional specimens were shot. In 1844, however, 
the two last remaining birds in that locality were cap¬ 
tured ; and in 1852 a dead bird was, according to reliable 
information, picked up in Trinity Bay. Since that the 
Great Auk has neither been brought to us nor seen again, 
although a good reward has been promised to the captains 
of all vessels sailing to the north for every specimen they 
might capture. The Great Auk may be said to be 
extinct,—never to be found again. 
Still we will not quite give up the hope that solitary 
individuals of this species have as yet escaped the 
clutches of destructive humanity, and are, therefore, still 
alive. This bird is entirely a sea-bird, only forsaking 
the flood when tired and weakened by heavy storms or 
drift ice. At such times it seeks groups of jagged rocks 
or isolated crags, surrounded by a boiling surf, so heavy 
as to defy the approach of man. These it ascends with 
great difficulty, shoving itself along horizontally, aided 
