“The complete extinction of the species of a group is generally a
slower process than their production,” he observed at one point.
No one had ever seen a new species produced, nor, according to
Darwin, should they expect to. Speciation was so drawn out as to be, for
all intents and purposes, unobservable. “We see nothing of these slow
changes in progress,” he wrote. It stood to reason that extinction should
have been that much more difficult to witness. And yet it wasn’t. In fact,
during the years Darwin spent holed up at Down House, developing his
ideas about evolution, the very last individuals of one of Europe’s most
celebrated species, the great auk, disappeared. What’s more, the event
was painstakingly chronicled by British ornithologists. Here Darwin’s
theory was directly contradicted by the facts, with potentially profound
implications.
THE Icelandic Institute of Natural History occupies a new building on a
lonely hillside outside Reykjavik. The building has a tilted roof and tilted
glass walls and looks a bit like the prow of a ship. It was designed as a
research facility, with no public access, which means that a special
appointment is needed to see any of the specimens in the institute’s
collection. These specimens, as I learned on the day of my own
appointment, include: a stuffed tiger, a stuffed kangaroo, and a cabinet
full of stuffed birds of paradise.
The reason I’d arranged to visit the institute was to see its great auk.
Iceland enjoys the dubious distinction of being the bird’s last known
home, and the specimen I’d come to look at was killed somewhere in the
country—no one is sure of the exact spot—in the summer of 1821. The
bird’s carcass was purchased by a Danish count, Frederik Christian Raben,
who had come to Iceland expressly to acquire an auk for his collection
(and had nearly drowned in the attempt). Raben took the specimen home
to his castle, and it remained in private hands until 1971, when it came up
for auction in London. The Institute of Natural History solicited
donations, and within three days Icelanders contributed the equivalent of