ally to sport in the water, with a cord fastened to one of its
legs, to prevent escape. Even in this state of restraint it
performed the motions of diving and swimming under water, |
with a rapidity that set all pursuit from a boat at defiance.
A few white feathers were at this time making their appear- ;
ance on the sides of its neck and throat, which increased
considerably during the following week, and left no room to
doubt that, like its congeners, the blackness of the throat-
feathers of summer is exchanged for white during the winter
season ” (Edinb. Phil. Journ. x. p. 96). It has been
stated, although upon insufficient evidence, that this bird (
afterwards escaped.
In May, 1834, a Great Auk was taken alive at the mouth
of Waterford Harbour by a fisherman named Kirby, who
noticed the bird swimming about near him, and by tossing
sprats to it, attracted it within reach of a landing-net, with
which he secured it. Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., states, upon
the authority of notes from Dr. Burkitt, who subsequently
obtained this example, that the details as given by Thompson
are inaccurate, and the following appear to he the facts:
—The immediate purchaser of the bird was Mr. Francis
Davis of Waterford, who presented it to Dr. Burkitt in September,
some days after its death, and hut for the fact that
the late Capt. John Spence, 89th Regiment, saw the bird at
Mr. Jacob Goff’s of Horetown (where he happened to he
on a visit), and bespoke it for Dr. Burkitt in case it should
die, it would probably have been lost to science, instead of
being, as it now is, one of the treasures of the Museum of
Trinity College, Dublin. Thompson’s statement that “ it
frequently stroked its head with its foot,” should read :—
“ This Auk stood very erect, was a very stately-looking bird,
and had a habit of frequently shaking its head in a peculiar
manner, more especially when any particularly favourite food
was presented to it ” (Zool. s.s. p. 1449).
The above appear to he the only authenticated instances
of the capture of the Great Auk in the British Islands
within the present century. These have been doubled by
confused statements in various works; and there are also
unsubstantiated records of the occurrence of this bird near
Lundy Island ; on the coast of Cork ; and in Belfast Lough ;
in addition to one off Fair Island, between the Orkneys and
the Shetlands, in June 1798, which is not improbable. Mr.
John Hancock believes that a Great Auk was taken at the
Fame Islands more than a century ago, and recorded in
Wallis’s ‘ Natural History and Antiquities of Northumberland,’
i. p. 340 (1769 Ed.), as “ The Penguin, a curious and
uncommon bird presented to John William Bacon, Esq., of
Etherstone, with whom it grew so tame and familiar that it
would follow him, with its body erect, to he fed.”
In the Faeroes, Dehes (1673) speaks of the ‘ Garfogel ’ as
birds which he had several times had, and which were easily
tamed, but would not live long inland; and Mohr (1786)
says that some were caught there most summers; hut in
1800 Landt states that these birds were then beginning to
become more rare. Major Feilden (Zool. 1872, p. 3280)
gives some further interesting details, amongst which aie
those of his interview with an old man, Jan Hansen, then
eighty-one years of age, who was present at the capture of a
single Great Auk, weighing nine Danish pounds, on a ledge
at the base of the Great Dimon on the 1st of July, 1808.
Iceland, which has furnished the majority of the skins and
eggs now existing in collections, seems to have been the
latest resort of this species. Off the coasts of that island
there were three skerries, each known by the name of ‘ Geii-
fuglasker,’ on all of which it has presumably bred, the best
known and most productive being the one lying off Re}k-
janes, which was sporadically visited by the natives. In
1808 the crew of a privateer under British colours remained
there a whole day, killing many birds and treading down
their eggs and young; and it was probably this skerry which
was visited on the 24th of August, 1813, by a schooner from
the Faeroes, sent to Iceland by Governor Lobner to obtain
provisions for the starving inhabitants. Major Feilden gives
the deposition of one of the crew, Daniel Joensen, taken
down in 1858, when he was seventy-one years of age, from
which it appears that either eleven or fourteen Gare-fowls
VOL. iv . K