The great auk was driven extinct by a scientific market for its eggs and stuffed remains Oscar Dominguez/Alamy
The Last of Its Kind
Gísli Pálsson (Princeton University Press Out now in the US; in the UK 2 April)
IN 1858, John Wolley and Alfred Newton, two British scientists, travelled to Iceland to study the great auk, a large, flightless seabird. They hoped to observe the bird in its natural habitat and perhaps bring home an egg, a skin or a stuffed bird to add to their collections.
This didn’t quite work out, as we discover in The Last…
