BUYING GREAT AUK'S EGG 43 



envy. Poor fellows ; but what could one do ? Is a 

 Great Auk's egg to be suffered to be pilloried in Oxford 

 Street exposed to the contemptuous gaze of the cads of 

 Holborn ? Ho ! St. Geirfowl to the rescue ! 



Of the price no man knoweth save and myself ; 



aU I can say is that sentimental oologising is expensive, 

 and may that consideration comfort my absent brothers 

 of the B.O.U.* 



The antecedents of that egg were, as Newton sup- 

 posed, extremely interesting and not altogether reputable. 

 When he first saw it, the egg bore a paper label, and the 

 owner, Mr. Calvert, showed Newton a number of other 

 eggs bearing similar labels, which he said he had bought 

 recently at the sale of the Natural History part of the 

 Museum of the United Service Institution. But the 

 Great Auk's egg, though he thought it came from the 

 same collection, he said he had bought from some one 

 else a fortnight before. 



I told him that I had learned from Mr. Leadbeater 

 that there was no such thing in the collection, but he 

 replied that the sale was so badly managed that whole 

 boxes, fuU of odds and ends, were sold without examina- 

 tion, and this agreed also with Mr. Leadbeater's account. 

 It ended in my coming to terms with Mr. Calvert ; I 

 was to have the egg conditionally on his informing me 

 whence he obtained it, and he was to keep it for me tiU 

 my return from the Continent, whither I was intending 

 to proceed that night — ^I paying a deposit upon it. On 

 September 4 I called by appointment to redeem the 

 egg, and upon my paying the price agreed upon, it was 

 handed over to me by Mr. Calvert, who informed me 

 that he had it from one WestaU, of Porchester or Portland 

 Terrace, Bayswater — ^he could not recollect which. I 

 complained that this was not according to our agreement, 

 for that he had promised to give me the person's address. 

 I lost no time, however, in writing to each of the places 



* Letter to H. B. Tristram, August 18, 1860. 



