We take the following respecting the eggs of the Great Auk or Gare- 
fowl from a recent issue of the ‘London Times,’ apropos of the recent 
sale in London of a noted egg of this celebrated bird. 
“The sale yesterday afternoon [Feb. 22, 1894] of an egg of the Great 
Auk at Mr. Steven’s auction-rooms in Covent Garden is an event of 
interest to many people besides ornithologists. After a keen competition 
it was purchased by Sir Vauncey Crewe, of Calke Abbey, Derbyshire’ 
for 300 guineas. 
“The collecting of birds’ eggs is a pastime which has obtained for some 
centuries. John Evelyn mentions in his diary for 1681 that when at 
Norwich he saw the collection of eggs formed by Sir Thomas Browne, 
but we must come to the end of the eighteenth century before we can 
trace any collector in possession of an egg of the Great Auk. Early in the 
present century references to collections containing specimens of this egg 
become more frequent. There are 68 recorded eggs of the Great Auk, 
but this number includes several fragmentary remains that can only by 
courtesy be called eggs. They may fairly be divided into four groups. 
Ten specimens, from their perfect condition, color, and style of marking, 
may be put into a class by themselves. Then we have 34 good specimens ; 
12 are slightly cracked, badly blown, or varnished eggs, while the 
remaining 14 are imperfect, varying from the eggs that had one end 
knocked off (probably for the purpose of sucking), like that in the Angers 
Museum, to the two fragments of the Natural History Museum at South 
Kensington. Great Britain possesses the larger number of the specimens, 
for, of the 68, England has 45 and Scotland 3. France comes next with 
10 eggs, followed by Germany with 3. Two are in Holland, while Den¬ 
mark, Portugal, and Switzerland each possess one; there are two in the 
United States. Again, of the 68 eggs, 29 are in 19 museums, while 21 
private owners possess 39 eggs among them. 
“The fact of the Great Auk having formerly inhabited the British Isles 
has been one great cause for the steady advance in value of its eggs. The 
earliest record we have of a sale by auction is in 1853, when two fetched 
respectively £29 and £30, which remained about their value until i860, 
when one sold for £60. In 1880 the price had risen to £100, followed in 
1887 by £168 and in 1888 by £225. 
“The egg which was sold yesterday, though not nearly such a good 
specimen as that sold in 1888, has an interest to all British ornithologists 
from having belonged to Yarrell, who purchased it in Boulogne of a 
fisherman who had been in a whaling ship. He had two or three swan’s 
eggs and this egg on a string. Yarrell asked if they were for sale, and 
was told that the white eggs were one franc each and the spotted one two 
francs. Unfortunately we do not know the date of this transaction, but it 
was anterior to 1838, for in that year the egg was figured in Hewitson’s 
‘British Oology.’ After Yarrell’s death it was sold at Stevens’s auction- 
rooms for £21 (December, 1856), and purchased for the late Mr. Frederick 
Bond, an old friend of Yarrell’s. It remained in this gentleman’s posses¬ 
sion until 1875, when it was sold with his unrivalled collection of British 
eggs to Baron Louis d’Hamonville of Chateau de Mononville, who sent 
it to Mr. Stevens.” 
Erratum. —At bottom of Plate IV, second line, for “preesing” read 
“preening.” 
Auk XI. April. 1864 p. 189-03 
GENERAL NOTES. 
An Egg of the Great Auk.— Mr. Symington Grieve of Edinburgh, in a 
recent letter to Capt. J. W. Collins, announces the discovery of one more 
egg of the Great Auk, “this time in a museum kept in the tower of an 
English parish church. The egg was labeled ‘Penguin,’and the owner 
of the museum was under the impression that it was the egg of one of 
the Penguins of the southern hemisphere, until in reading an , article in 
one of the magazines he observed that the Great Auk also was known as 
the Penguin in the American localities that were frequented by the bird. 
He had the egg examined by experts who pronounced it undoubtedly an 
egg of A lea invpenms . From all that can be discovered of its histoiv it 
appears in all probability to have come from Newfoundland.”.— Frederic 
A. Lucas, Washington-, D. C. Auk. G, Apt’. 12^2. p, / J ^ 
