they are less exposed to the action of the weather, so that, contrary to what might have been expected, the more recently killed birds are the poorest for anatomical purposes.
These Alcine remains, if one may judge from the brief accounts of the few visits made to Funk Island, are rapidly deteriorating. Thus, in 1863, a party of guano-seekers came upon four nearly entire, dried-up bodies; while, in 1874, Prof. Milne secured in half an hour bones representing fifty individuals from which four more or less complete skeletons were reconstructed.
In 1887 our party passed the better part of two busy days in the work of excavating bones of the great auk; and, although the material secured represents hundreds of individuals, it may not make more than a dozen skeletons, and these not all absolutely perfect.
So difficult is it to procure certain bones in a good state of preservation, that the collection of the United States National Museum contains but a single perfect sternum, and one nearly perfect pelvis. Twenty-five years have elapsed since the "mummies" were secured; and while it is quite possible that others may yet be exhumed, it will be either by rare good fortune or an unlimited amount of digging, for, in the hope of coming upon a "mummy," many holes were sunk quite to the bed-rock, but without success. Curiously enough, these bones rarely bear any mark to indicate that the birds were killed by stick or knife, a fact which caused Prof. Milne to remark that this "leads to the supposition that the birds may have died peacefully." Birds that die peacefully, however, seem to have a habit of making away with their skeletons, and on Funk Island there are few bones to be found of any bird save the great auk.[1]
Even in the immense guano deposits of the Chincha Islands, where the perfect dryness of the soil is unusually favorable to the preservation of inhumed specimens, bird remains are of rare occurrence.
Some of the crania, too, found on Funk Island, bear fractures that must have been caused by a heavy blow, and one specimen met with had evidently come to its death from the stroke of a knife. Prof. Milne's second surmise, that the bones "were the remains of some great slaughter, when the birds had been killed, parboiled, and despoiled only of their feathers; after which they were thrown in a heap," is undoubtedly correct. Not only is the conjecture borne out by current tradition, and by the intermingled condition of the skeletons, but by the distorted appearance of many bones, which, like the ribs, pelvis, and wish-bone, would be most easily affected by pressure.
- ↑ Since this was written I have had time to examine the material more carefully, and find that a large number of the crania are fractured.
