15° THE ESSEX FIELD CLUJ! 



in tlie British Isles (see Symington Grieve's " Great Auk," p. 77).' The nute 

 made by Dr. Bree on this bird is, " a fine specimen well set up, tvnd in good con- 

 dition. I had it removed and examined. The only marks upon it were No. -g-^ in 

 red ink on the back. Prof. Newton thinks it probable it was obtained from a 

 dealer in Hamburgh, who was the last of his trade known to have sold speci- 

 mens." The measuremenis of the Hoy specirhen, taken outside the glass case, 

 are as follows : — 



Length ... ... ... ... ... ... 26^ inches. 



f Length of beak 2j „ 



(. Greatest breadtli ... ... ... ... ... 2^ ,, 



Tarsi ... ... ... ... ... about 2 ,, 



Toes ... ... ... ... ... ... 2 ,, 



Carpus, to tip of wing ... ... ... ... 6.^ „ 



Humeral portion of ditto ... ... ... 3 ,, 



One of the members present at the meeting, Mr. Murray Tuke, of Saffron 

 Walden, is the possessor of an egg of the Great Auk, a specimen mentioned first 

 by Hewitson in his " Coloured Illustrations of the Eggs of British Birds " (1846) 

 Grieve says that it was purchased from Reid of Doncaster, who bought it from F. 

 Schulz, of Dresden, for £2 6s. The value of the eggs have immensely increased, 

 of late years. No recent sales of the bird itself have occurred, but in December, 

 1887, an egg belonging to the Rev. H. Burney, of Woburn, Bedfordshire, was 

 sold in Stevens' rooms to Mr. L. Field for £i6S. This specimen was one of 

 four duplicates sold in the same rooms in 1865 by the Council of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons, and for which Mr. Burney gave £$1 los. But these prices 

 were soon much exceeded. On March 12th, 1888, an egg belonging to Mrs. 

 Wise (inherited from her father, Mr. Holland, who had purchased it in 185 1 for 

 ^18 from Williams, of Vera Street, the egg coming originally from Lefevre, of 

 Paris) was sold by Mr. Stevens to Mr. J. Gardner, of Oxford Street, acting on 

 behalf of a collector, for the astonishing sum of ;^225. Mr. Gardner still has 

 a coloured drawing of this egg. From these prices of the eggs some idea may be 

 formed of the probable sale value of a good specimen of the bird should one ever 

 come into the market. 



Another very interesting bird in the collection is the first British-killed 

 specimen of the Pectoral Sandpiper (^Fringa pectoralis) which was shot on 

 Breydon Broad on October 17th, 1830, and recorded by Mr. Hoy in the 

 " Magazine of Natural History" for 1837 (N.S., vol. i., p. 1 16). See Stevens's 

 " Birds of Norfolk," vol. ii., p. 367, and Babington's " Birds of Suffolk," p. 24c, 

 where the specimen is figured. 



Among the rarer birds are two Ospreys, a pair of Common Kites, a Swallow- 

 tailed Kite, a Cream-coloured Courser, and the Great Bustard (male and female) 

 which Mr. Lescher informed us were from Wiltshire.- 



1 " The Great Auk or Garefowl {Alca iinfciuiis, L.). Its History, Archaeology, and Remains.'' 

 By Symington Grieve. (London, 1885.) 



2 Mr. Harting has called attention to a curious passage in Dr. Muffett's " Health's Improve- 

 ment ' (4to, 1655, p. 91), which has been generally overlooked by writers on British birds, but 

 wnich testifies to the abundance of the Bustard in Wilts in the time of (Jueen Sllizabeth. Dr. 

 Muffett, whose book was published long after his death (he died in 1590), was a pensioner of 

 ttie Earl of Wilton, and li\ed at Bulbridge, in Wiltshire. He wrote of the Bustard, in the 

 passage alluded lo .'ibove : "In the summer, towards the ripening of corn, I have seen h.alf a 

 dozen of them lie in a wheatfield fattening themselves (as a deer will doe) with ease .and eating, 

 whereupon they grow sometimes to such .a bigness, that one of them weighed .almost fourteen 

 l^jund. ' — El). 



