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Updated: June 13, 2025
Neither fame nor money was to be gained by such a trip unless, indeed, I succeeded in catching the great auk, for which, it is said, the directors of the British Museum have offered a reward of a hundred pounds. This was a chance, to be sure. I might possibly be able to get hold of the auk, and thereby secure money enough to pay expenses, and make certain a niche in the temple of fame.
The next a few fresh "turr," a very "fishy" sea auk, are left ever so quietly inside his woodshed and so it goes. It is a constant marvel to me that these people, who live so perilously near the margin of want, are always so eager to share up. François is sitting in our cellar as I write pulling nails from old boxes with my new patent nail-drawer.
However, it was the white man who brought ruin to this magnificent sea-fowl, for the savage Indians were too provident to exterminate any species of bird or animal. The Great Auk was last seen in America between 1830 and 1840, and the final individual, so far as there is any positive record, was killed off Iceland in 1841.
The modern enquirer will recognize, perhaps, the great auk which once abounded on the coast, but which is now extinct. The sailors killed large numbers of the birds, and filled two boats with them. Then the ships sailed on rejoicing from the Island of Birds with six barrels full of salted provisions added to their stores. Cartier's Island of Birds is the Funk Island of our present maps.
Reproduction, in cultivated countries, cannot keep pace with this excessive destruction, and there is no doubt that all the wild birds which are chased for their flesh or their plumage are diminishing with a rapidity which justifies the fear that the last of them will soon follow the dodo and the wingless auk.
Some of the party, however, had more of the hunter's than the fisher's spirit in them, and prepared to make raids on the homes of the great auk, or to ramble in the forests. Squill was among the latter.
My heart was beating with excitement at the prospect; I looked out across the wooded headlands and tangled stretches of dune and hollow, trying to realize what it might mean to me, to Professor Farrago, to the world, if I should lead back to New York a live auk. "He's a crank," said Lee; "frankly, I don't like him. If you find it unpleasant there, come back to us." "Does Halyard live alone?"
How strange it is that a bird, under the form of a woodpecker, should prey on insects on the ground; that upland geese, which rarely or never swim, would possess webbed feet; that a thrush-like bird should dive and feed on sub-aquatic insects; and that a petrel should have the habits and structure fitting it for the life of an auk! and so in endless other cases.
Now the light-house, the fog-gun, and the improved chart have taken the place of the extinct auk as aids to navigation, and the sailor of to-day sees the bright flashes of St. Paul's lights when nearly twenty miles at sea. Having passed the little isle, the ship enters the great Gulf of St.
You can't catch 'em alive. And I wouldn't sell no eggs at all till they'd first been blowed. I'd keep the business all in my own hands. Abner, I've been thinkin' a great deal about this thing. You've heard about the lively sixpence and the slow dollar? Well, sir, I'm goin' to sell them auk eggs for sixteen hundred dollars, two for three thousand."
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