< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
Egg of the Great Auk.
The great auk's egg, of which a natural-size representation is given in the accompanying figure, was recently sold at auction in England for £225; this is the highest price ever given for a single egg at any auction in England. This one was bought by its late owner, in 1851, for £18. Of the sixty-seven recorded specimens of this egg, forty-four are in Great Britain. Some two hundred and fifty years ago, vessels fishing on the Banks of Newfoundland made great use of these birds for provisions. They were plentiful in that vicinity, and when found on land could be captured wholesale by simply placing a plank from the shore to a boat, up which the auks could be driven. Having no power of flight, the species gradually disappeared from America, and from Europe not long after, the last two specimens of which there is trustworthy evidence having been killed in Iceland in 1844.

bodies long ago crumbled away, yielding up the odor they may once have possessed.

Between the central and southern rise are numerous shallow pools of rain-water, rendered brackish by the driving spray, but still fresh enough to be drunk in case of emergency. Just such an emergency befell a party of eggers some twenty years ago when their schooner was forced away by stress of weather, leaving the men who had landed to subsist for eleven days on a varied diet of eggs, birds, and brackish water.

On the western portion of the southernmost swell of rock lie the former breeding-grounds of the great auk, now mapped out in rich green by the rank vegetation covering this, the soil-clad part of the island. This section alone was accessible to the flightless garefowl, and here in days gone by the great auk scrambled through the breakers and over the slippery rocks, which north and south slope into the sea, to reach its nesting-place. Here, to-day, its bones lie buried in the shallow soil, every weathered slab of granite marking the resting-place of some ill-fated bird. The industrious puffins, whose labors have everywhere honey-combed the ground, play the part of resurrectionists, and the entrance to

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