VOL. VI.] NOTES. 257 



EGG XXIV. (Sale number twenty six.) 



An egg of the Great Auk, on Jvme 7th, 1910. 

 Described in the sale catalogue No. 11,820 as a "beautifully 

 marked egg." 



Egg XXIV. - " Lot A. The property of Mr. Evelyn Shirley. 



EGG OF THE GREAT AUK. This 

 beautifully marked egg, the very finest of 

 its tj^e, formed part of a Natural History 

 collection, which was the property of Mr. 

 W. Sheppard, of Bristol, in 1807, and was 

 purchased by Mr. Shirley, of Ettington, about 

 1820." 



Bought by Mr. E. L. Armbrecht, of Duke Street, 



Grosvenor Square, London, for £262 10 



Mr. Symington Grieve, in his Supplementary Note (Trans. Edin. 

 Field Nat. and Micro. Soc, Vol. III., 1896-7) wrote on page 263 : — 

 " Stratford-on-Avon : Ettington Park, Mr. S. E. Shirley. — This egg is 

 said to have been formerly in a large collection of natural history 

 specimens belonging to Mr. Shepherd, of Bristol, and, having been 

 labelled as the egg of a penguin, remained muioticed for some eighty 

 years. Writing to me on 18th December, 1896, Mr. S. E. Shirley says : 

 ' My egg has been here many years, and is believed to have formed 

 part of a large collection of birds, eggs, heads, feet, etc., bought by my 

 grandfather early this century, but the catalogue of the collection 

 marked "Catalogue of the Collection 6 of W. Shepherd, Bristol, 1807," 

 does not include the Great Auk egg ; but it is badly done and other 

 eggs are also omitted. The egg is a very fine one, boldly and richly 

 marked, and of good size, quite perfect, with the exception that it is 

 blown with a rather large hole. I fear this is all I can tell you about 

 it. It was originally in a small cardboard case with a glass lid, and 

 was stuck to the back of the case in quite the primitive style of egg- 

 collectors.' " 



A photograph of this egg was taken by Mr. Bidwell, in July, 1891, 

 when at Ettington, and he also exhibited the egg at a meeting of the 

 British Ornithologists' Club, on 25th May, 1910, when it was described 

 in the Bulletin of the Society (No. CLXL, p. 115) as " one of the finest 

 zoned specimens richly streaked with black " and " the property of 

 Mr. Evelyn Shirley." 



The frontispiece of my pamphlet consists of a picture of 

 the great auction-room at 38, King Street, Covent Garden, 

 London, while Mr, Henry Stevens was selling this egg on 

 June 7th, 1910. Thomas Parkin. 



Courtship of the Redshank. — In the Poceedings of the 

 Zoological Society (1912, pp. 647-55) Mr. Julian S. Huxley 

 has an interesting and Avell arranged paper on this subject. 

 He first gives a very clear account of the course of courtship 

 and pairing, as observed by him, from which it is perfectly 

 clear that there is a very marked display by the male and 

 an equally marked power of choice by the female Redshank. 

 The love-flight, the combats of the males, and the habit 



