i897-9 8 -] The Great Auk. 329 



On 28th December 1897 Mons. H. Duchaussoy kindly re- 

 plied to my inquiries as follows : " I have the honour of 

 sending you some new information regarding the Great Auk 

 which formed part of M. Ernest Delegorgue's collection. This 

 collection, which was in bad condition, was on the death of M. 

 Delegorgue given to the town of Abbeville, with the exception 

 of two interesting specimens — the Snow Harfang (Great Snowy 

 Owl) and the Great Auk, which was kept by M. Jules Bar- 

 bieux, now dead. His son-in-law, M. Paul Holtzapffel, 

 judge of the civil tribunal, Eue de la Tannerie, has kindly 

 written an interesting letter to me, from which I extract 

 for you the following passage : " The following entry has 

 been found in the books of my father-in-law under the date 

 July 17, 1888, ' Beceived from M. Maingonnat for a bird, 

 1000 francs.' It is certainly the Alca impennis of Delegorgue 

 which was sold for 1000 francs to M. Maingonnat." 1 



As I was anxious to find out when Mr Leopold Field bought 

 the skin now belonging to the Hon. W. Bothschild, I wrote 

 him requesting some information, and he kindly replied on 

 6th January 1898 : " The skin was offered to me, I think, in 

 the early summer of 1890. Mons. Boucard said it was a 

 different skin to the one he first offered by letter at £1000. 2 

 Finally he came down to £300 (three hundred pounds), which 

 I gave. The whole transaction and correspondence did not 

 occupy a month. The final date would be June or July 

 1890. I paid £300 net cash, delivered at my rooms, and in 

 1893 sold it and the Potts egg to Mr Eowland Ward, Picca- 

 dilly, for £630. The specimen came unmounted, with little 

 spikes in the feet. I had it handsomely displayed in a glass 

 case, with a model egg and a background of sea and sky. Mr 

 Eowland Ward had all the papers relative to the skin and 



ecrc " 

 c e>o- 



This skin was removed from its case and sent by Mr L. 



1 Mons. H. Duchaussoy, in his " Notes Additionelles, " published in 1898, in 

 a note to p. 8, says that M. Maingonnat, who resided at 37 Rue Richer, Paris, 

 died in 1893, and that his business of merchant of natural history wares has not 

 been continued. 



2 The skin for which Mons. Boucard wanted £1000 is presumably the skin 

 now in the collection of the Hon. W. Rothschild, which he bought from Mons. 

 Boucard, and which came from the collection of Count David de Riocour, Vitry- 

 le-Franeois. 



