Note 232 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN.

This is undoubtedly a misprint for Auckies, which was a sailor’s corruption for Auks. The Great Auk (Alca impennis) is probably referred to. This bird, now supposed to be extinct, was formerly common on the New England coast. Audubon, writing in 1838, says: “An old gunner, residing on Chelsea Beach, near Boston, told me that he well remembered the time when the Penguins were plentiful about Nahant and some other islands in the bay.” (Am. Ornithological Biog., vol. iv. p. 316.) Professor Orton, alluding to this passage, in the American Naturalist (1869, p. 540), expresses the opinion that the Razor-billed Auk was the bird referred to; but Professor F. W. Putnam adds, in a foot-note, that “the ‘old hunter’ was undoubtedly correct in his statement, as we have bones of the species taken from the shell-heaps of Marblehead, Eagle Hill in Ipswich, and Plum Island.” Dr. Jeffries Wyman found them in the shell-heaps at Cotuit. See Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 12.

There is an elaborate paper on the Great Auk, under the title of “The Garefowl and its Historians,” by Professor Alfred Newton, in the Natural History Review for 1865, p. 467.