Identifier: aquaticbirdsofgr00patt (find matches)
Title: The aquatic birds of Great Britain and Ireland
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Patten, Charles Joseph, 1870-
Subjects: Water birds Water birds
Publisher: London, R. H. Porter
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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itsnatural environment and so, becoming gradually reduced innumbers, at length disappeared as a living species. Thissloiv process of extinction seems all the less likely when oneconsiders the numbers of other flightless or feeble-flightedDivers which, perforce, are periodically destroyed in multi-tudes by hurricanes, preyed upon by many enemies of thedeep, swept from the rocks by volcanic and other seismicdisturbances, and yet these species still exist, some in vastassemblages. Were the Great Auk a polar-breeding species, its fatemight have been far different, but selecting as it did low,flat islands in Temperate or, to a less extent, in Sub-arcticseas, its breeding-haunts were easily negotiable by whalers,fishermen, skin-traders, &c. It is important to bear inmind that the Great Auk was a large bird, hardly inferiorin size to a goose, and so worth killing and salting down PLATE LII. .^fl^^l^ Bl r ^ •■*T^ Fig. 1.—HEAD OF (iliKAT AUK. ITalf iiatund si/e. (Right profile view.)
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Fig. 2.—HEAD OF GREAT AUK. Half uatural size. (Left profile view.Photographs of the specimen in the Museum of Zoology, Dublin University. GKEAT AUK 481 for food. It seems evident that it was throup;h the activeagency of Man, who made special raids on it, that thisill-fated bird was hurried to its doom; and, when the birdsgrew scarce as marketable commodities, it is certain thatthe last of the species were killed to supply the wants ofmuseum and private collectors, and thus the bird becametotally extinct. That the Great Aiik did not become scarce by slowdegrees like many other now extinct creatures, is a fact wellacknowledged by many ornithologists, and here I quotethe words of Professor Newton on the subject:— In Ice-land there is the testimony of a score of witnesses, takendown from their lips by one of the most careful naturalistswho ever lived, the late John Wolley, that the latest sur-vivors of the species were caught and killed by expeditionsexpressly organised with the view

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