Orkneys, we know that George Low, who died in 1795, says in his posthumously-published Fauna Orcadensis that he could not find it was ever seen there; and on Bullock’s visit in 1812 he was told, says Montagu (Orn. Dict. App.), that one male only had made its appearance for a long time. This bird he saw and unsuccessfully hunted, but it was killed soon after his departure, while its mate had been killed just before his arrival, and none have been seen there since. As to the Hebrides, St Kilda is the only locality recorded for it, and the last example known to have been obtained there, or in its neighbourhood, was that given to Fleming (Edinb. Phil. Journ. x. p. 96) in 1821 or 1822, having been some time before captured by Mr Maclellan of Glass. That the gare-fowl was not plentiful in either group of islands is sufficiently obvious, as also is the impossibility of its continuing to breed “up to the year 1830.”
But mistakes like these are not confined to British authors. As on the death of an ancient hero myths gathered round his memory as quickly as clouds round the setting sun, so have stories, probable as well as impossible, accumulated over the true history of this species, and it behoves the conscientious naturalist to exercise more than common caution in sifting the truth from the large mass of error. Americans have asserted that the specimen which belonged to Audubon (now at Vassar College) was obtained by him on the banks of Newfoundland, though there is Macgillivray’s distinct statement (Brit. Birds, v. p. 359) that Audubon procured it in London. The account given by Degland (Orn. Europ. ii. p. 529) in 1849, and repeated in the last edition of his work by M. Gerbe, of its extinction in Orkney, is so manifestly absurd that it deserves to be quoted in full: “Il se trouvait en assez grand nombre il y a une quinzaine d’années aux Orcades; mais le ministre presbytérien dans le Mainland, en offrant une forte prime aux personnes qui lui apportaient cet oiseau, a été cause de sa destruction sur ces îles.” The same author claims the species as a visitor to the shores of France on the testimony of Hardy (Annuaire normand, 1841, p. 298), which he grievously misquotes both in his own work and in another place (Naumannia, 1855, p. 423), thereby misleading an anonymous English writer (Nat. Hist. Rev., 1865, p. 475) and numerous German readers.
John Milne in 1875 visited Funk Island, one of the former resorts of the gare-fowl, or “penguin,” as it was there called, in the Newfoundland seas, a place where bones had before been obtained by Stuvitz, and natural mummies so lately as 1863 and 1864. Landing on this rock at the risk of his life, he brought off a rich cargo of its remains, belonging to no fewer than fifty birds, some of them in size exceeding any that had before been known. His collection was subsequently dispersed, most of the specimens finding their way into various public museums.
A literature by no means inconsiderable has grown up respecting the gare-fowl. Neglecting works of general bearing, few of which are without many inaccuracies, the following treatises may be especially mentioned:—J. J. S. Steenstrup, “Et Bidrag til Geirfuglens Naturhistorie og saerligt til Kundskaben om dens tidligere Udbredningskreds,” Naturh. Foren. Vidensk. Meddelelser (Copenhagen, 1855), p. 33; E. Charlton, “On the Great Auk,” Trans. Tyneside Nat. Field Club, iv. p. 111; “Abstract of Mr J. Wolley’s Researches in Iceland respecting the Gare-fowl,” Ibis (1861), p. 374; W. Preyer, “Über Plautus impennis,” Journ. für Orn. (1862), pp. 110, 337; K. E. von Baer, “Über das Aussterben der Tierarten in physiologischer und nicht physiologischer Hinsicht,” Bull. de l’Acad. Imp. de St-Pétersb. vi. p. 513; R. Owen, “Description of the Skeleton of the Great Auk,” Trans. Zool. Soc. v. p. 317; “The Gare-fowl and its Historians,” Nat. Hist. Rev. v. p. 467; J. H. Gurney, jun., “On the Great Auk,” Zoologist (2nd ser.), pp. 1442, 1639; H. Reeks, “Great Auk in Newfoundland,” &c., op. cit. p. 1854; V. Fatio, “Sur l’Alca impennis,” Bull. Soc. Orn. Suisse, ii. pp. 1, 80, 147; “On existing Remains of the Gare-fowl,” Ibis (1870), p. 256; J. Milne, “Relics of the Great Auk,” Field (27th of March, 3rd and 10th of April 1875). Lastly, reference cannot be omitted to the happy exercise of poetic fancy with which Charles Kingsley was enabled to introduce the chief facts of the gare-fowl’s extinction (derived from one of the above-named papers) into his charming Water Babies. (A. N.)
GARFIELD, JAMES ABRAM (1831–1881), twentieth president of the United States, was born on the 19th of November 1831 in a log cabin in the little frontier town of Orange, Cuyahoga county, Ohio. His early years were spent in the performance of such labour as fell to the lot of every farmer’s son in the new states, and in the acquisition of such education as could be had
in the district schools held for a few weeks each winter. But life
on a farm was not to his liking, and at sixteen he left home and
set off to make a living in some other way. A book of stories
of adventure on the sea, which he read over and over again when
a boy, had filled him with a longing for a seafaring life. He
decided, therefore, to become a sailor, and, in 1848, tramping
across the country to Cleveland, Ohio, he sought employment
from the captain of a lake schooner. But the captain drove him
from the deck, and, wandering on in search of work, he fell in
with a canal boatman who engaged him. During some months
young Garfield served as bowsman, deck-hand and driver of a
canal boat. An attack of the ague sent him home, and on
recovery, having resolved to attend a high school and fit himself
to become a teacher, he passed the next four years in a hard
struggle with poverty and in an earnest effort to secure an education,
studying for a short time in the Geauga Seminary at Chester,
Ohio. He worked as a teacher, a carpenter and a farmer;
studied for a time at the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute
at Hiram, Ohio, which afterward became Hiram College, and
finally entered Williams College. On graduation, in 1856,
Garfield became professor of ancient languages and literature
in the Eclectic Institute at Hiram, and within a year had risen
to the presidency of the institution.
Soon afterwards he entered political life. In the early days of the Republican party, when the shameful scenes of the Kansas struggle were exciting the whole country, and during the campaigns of 1857 and 1858, he became known as an effective speaker and ardent anti-slavery man. His reward for his services was election in 1859 to the Ohio Senate as the member from Portage and Summit counties. When the “cotton states” seceded, Garfield appeared as a warm supporter of vigorous measures. He was one of the six Ohio senators who voted against the proposed amendment to the Federal Constitution (Feb. 28th, 1861) forbidding any constitutional amendment which should give Congress the power to abolish or interfere with slavery in any state; he upheld the right of the government to coerce seceded states; defended the “Million War Bill” appropriating a million dollars for the state’s military expenses; and when the call came for 75,000 troops, he moved that Ohio furnish 20,000 soldiers and three millions of dollars as her share. He had just been admitted to the bar, but on the outbreak of war he at once offered his services to the governor, and became lieutenant-colonel and then colonel of the 42nd Ohio Volunteers, recruited largely from among his former students. He served in Kentucky, was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general of volunteers early in 1862; took part in the second day’s fighting at the battle of Shiloh, served as chief of staff under Rosecrans in the Army of the Cumberland in 1863, fought at Chickamauga, and was made a major-general of volunteers for gallantry in that battle. In 1862 he was elected a member of Congress from the Ashtabula district of Ohio, and, resigning his military commission, took his seat in the House of Representatives in December 1863. In Congress he joined the radical wing of the Republican party, advocated the confiscation of Confederate property, approved and defended the Wade-Davis manifesto denouncing the tameness of Lincoln, and was soon recognized as a hard worker and ready speaker. Capacity for work brought him places on important committees—he was chairman successively of the committee on military affairs, the committee on banking and currency, and the committee on appropriations,—and his ability as a speaker enabled him to achieve distinction on the floor of the House and to rise to leadership. Between 1863 and 1873 Garfield delivered speeches of importance on “The Constitutional Amendment to abolish Slavery,” “The Freedman’s Bureau,” “The Reconstruction of the Rebel States,” “The Public Debt and Specie Payments,” “Reconstruction,” “The Currency,” “Taxation of United States Bonds,” “Enforcing the 14th Amendment,” “National Aid to Education,” and “the Right to Originate Revenue Bills.” The year 1874 was one of disaster to the Republican party. The greenback
