Word: auk
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...California grew more civilized, condor food grew scarcer. Condors that died were not easily replaced, for this filthy, majestic scavenger lays only one or two eggs at a time, every other year. Though virtually extinct in recent years, the California condor was expected soon to follow the great auk. dodo and passenger pigeon into history...
...plains, mountain ranges, rainfall, Stuart Chase proceeds to long, eloquent, angry lament on the squandering of native riches. Like the Whitman of a bankrupt country, he composes a great catalog of lost national wealth, including the buffalo, the passenger pigeon, eastern salmon, Pacific halibut, petroleum, timber, coal, the great auk, the Carolina parakeet, the drought-impoverished Dust Bowl. It is a disturbing account, calculated to make any responsible citizen treasure every green tree and each clear brook of his native land. The oyster catch declined from 25 million bushels in 1901 to 16 million in 1926. Beavers "were butchered...
Contrary to general belief the Auk was not an Arctic bird. It bred and lived in Iceland and on the islands off Newfoundland where French fishermen were responsible for its extinction. Auk hunting was simplicity itself. A gangplank was laid from a fishing boat to a rock on shore. Inquisitive Auks waddled painfully aboard, were knocked on the head and dumped in the hold...
...Auk eggs sold last week brought from $525 to $1,315 apiece. Like first folio Shakespeares, each had an individual history. One was found by the late great Alfred Newton in a box at the Royal College of Surgeons. Lady Cust got another for five francs in a French shop. A third belonged to Captain Cook, the explorer...
...Auk skins are not unknown in the U. S. Stuffed Auks are in Washington's Smithsonian Institution and New York's American Museum of Natural History. Phillips Andover and Vassar have an Auk apiece...