SALES OF EGGS 17 



was very keen competition among collectors to secure 

 specimens of the newly-discovered species, and high 

 prices were obtained for the eggs of the Waxwing, Pine 

 Grosbeak, Siberian Jay, etc. : thus £5 10s. was paid for 

 the first egg of the Waxwing, £4 5s. for an egg of the Pine 

 Grosbeak, and 25s. for a single egg of the Siberian Jay. 

 Greatly exaggerated rumours went aboat concerning the 

 profits made by these sales. The total amount realised 

 by Wolley's seven sales from 1853 to 1859 did not exceed 

 £940, and it is safe to say that the cost of obtaining the 

 specimens greatly exceeded that sum. In 1860, after 

 Wolley's death, Newton held another sale of a large 

 number of his duplicate specimens ; the sum amounted 

 to about £200, which he devoted to the publication of the 

 first part of the catalogue of Wolley's collection, the 

 " Ootheca WoUeyana." 



It was in 1855 that Newton made his only journey to 

 Lapland. With his friend W. Hadleston Simpson * he 

 crossed the North Sea from Hull to Christiania at the 

 end of May. It blew half a gale and the ship, " being 

 much impeded by a railway carriage in the fore part of 

 the deck," made only four and a half knots an hour, but 

 Newton alone of all the passengers suffered not at all. 

 From Christiania the railway extended at that time only 

 as far as Eidswold, and thence they drove to Trondhjem 

 in carrioles, being accompanied a part of the way by one 

 of the earliest mountaineers in Norway, Blackwell,! with 

 the Chamonix guide, Gideon Balmat. By covering the 

 last hundred miles into Trondhjem in twenty-eight hours 

 they arrived just in time to take passage in the weekly 

 mail steamer to Hammerfest. As they went northward 

 up the coast all the days and most of the nights were 



* Afterwards W. H. Hudleston, F.R.S. ; died 1909. 

 t Eardley J. Blackwell : made one of the earliest ascents of the 

 Wetterhom in 1854. 



C 



