ALCA IMPENNIS,. Olt 
[§ 4835. Zwo—Newfoundland Seas? From Lord Lilford, 
24 April, 1888. 
O. W. tabb. xvil.—xviii. 
These two eggs, of four given to me by Lord Lilford, were bought by 
him in Mr. Stevens's auction room 2nd July, 1880, whither they had been sent 
for sale by Mr. Small, of Edinburgh, who himself had bought them for thirty- 
two shillings at a miscellaneous sale of the property of a Mr. W. Cleghorn 
Murray, of 3 Clarendon Stieet, in Mr. Dowell’s auction room in that city, 
8 May, 1880, no one else present having any notion of their value. The first 
intimation I had of the discovery of these specimens, hitherto unknown to 
naturalists, was contained in a letter from Colonel (then Captain) Feilden, 
who by mere chance was prevented from being present. He lost no time in 
attempting to trace the history of these eggs and therein was materially assisted 
by Mr. Harvie-Brown. As usual, the investigation was beset by many 
difficulties: at first it appeared that a former possessor had been a Mr. Little, a 
literary gentleman, who some thirty years before had lived in Lauriston Lane 
in Edinburgh, where, according to a Mr. Stillie, a bookseller, he had a “ most 
extraordinary colection of evgs”; but subsequently Mr. Harvie-Brown made 
out that these eggs had undoubtedly belonged to a Mr. Joseph Moule, from 
1820-40 President of the Post Office at Edinburgh, one half of whose collection 
containing these specimens was sold to Mr. Murray, the possessor of them until 
1880, though My, Grieve in his monograph (‘The Great Auk,’ &c., London: 
1885, p. 109) declares that Mr. Murray bought them of a Mr. Lister. 
The question of the intermediate ownership of these eggs is comparatively 
unimportant. Ihave been informed that on their acquisition by Mr. Small, 
the word “ Pingouin” was plainly visible upon each, but that he (for some 
reason unknown to me) did his best to efface it, so that it is no longer legible ; 
but he fortunately left upon them the mysterious inscription “ Egal” or 
“ Keale ”—whatever that may mean. These words plainly indicate that the 
eggs had passed through French hands, and one can hardly help connecting 
them with the two eggs some years since found to exist in the Edinburgh 
Museum, which are known to have come from Dufresne’s collection bought by 
the University of that capital in 1818. The present specimens, from their 
broken condition, may have been thought unworthy of a place in the Museum, 
and been accordingly rejected—when they may well have fallen into Mr. Moule’s 
hands. This, of course, is but conjectural, though it seems likely enough, for 
Dufresne is known to have had two or three specimens (fide Mr. Scales, infra, 
p: 380). If so, there cannot be much doubt that these eggs, like others which 
we know to have existed so long in collections, must have come from the 
Newfoundland seas—as it is almost impossible that they could have been 
brought from Iceland. | 
1§ 4836. One.—Newfoundlan Seas? From Lord Lilford, 
24 April, 1888. 
O. W. tab. xix. 
The third of the four given to me by Lord Lilford, having been bought by 
