* 896-97-] The Great Auk. 247 



son. The latter is a very intelligent young man of nineteen years, and 

 extremely fond of watching and taking notes of the habits of wild bird, 

 frequentmg the island He is described by Mr Thomson in his pamphlet, 

 A Cruise oft the Western Hebrides,' as the "ram avis of St Kilda" 

 Alexander Ferguson takes a keen interest in natural history, and has 



tSTr" ° f ?' f riVal and de P arture of the ™ ious Bpecies 



manv of V ^T* ^ ^ ^^ St ™8° to ^> ** s » 

 any ot the islanders together with Ferguson noticed a pair of birds 



similar in shape to the razorbill, but twice the size of that bird. They 



were unable to get close enough to identify those birds. The description 



however tallies w th the extinct Great Auk. Can it be possible" 2 



these birds were the Great Auk? To obtain a single specimen of this 



species oi bird would be a small fortune to any one. 



In a former paper to this Society I referred to models of 

 the Great Auk. 1 In a letter dated 6th October 1888 Dr J 

 E Harting of the Linnean Society, London, and Editor' of the 

 Zoo ogist,' drew my attention to the description of a model 

 Greak Auk which appeared in his magazine in 1880 p 516 

 and which was written by Dr Harting himself. He also' 

 mentioned to me the model offered for sale at the auction 

 rooms of Mr J. C. Stevens, 38 King Street, Covent Garden 

 London, 21st August 1888, lot 116, which Dr Harting says' 

 was described as follows: "A feather model of the Great 

 Auk, constructed from observations made from genuine speci- 

 mens m the possession of Viscount Hill, John Crocke, Esq " 

 (evidently John Eocke is intended), "and Mr Eoljambe re- 

 spectively, and made according to Yarrell's description of the 

 true bird." In reply to my inquiries, Mr J. C. Stevens kindly 

 wrote me on 19th March 1897: "I find a model of the 

 Great Auk was offered for sale 21st August 1888 The 

 reserve price was £30, and I believe I had a bid of £20 for 

 it. It was, as far as I can remember, a very perfect model 

 Another model was offered about eighteen months ago, but 

 that I failed to get a purchaser for." 



On the 19th October 1888 I called with my wife at the 

 shop of a dealer in London who was quite a stranger to me 

 but who had at that time in his possession an egg of the' 

 breat Auk. I found that the dealer was not in, and that 

 the egg I wanted to see was at another place of business of 

 his. The manager, however, said they had another egg of 



1 'Trans. EdLn. Field Nat. and Micro. Soc.,' vol. ii. p. 118. 



