392 Mr. A. Newton on Mr. J. Wolley’s Researches 
birds were strangled and cast into the boat, and the two younger 
men followed. Old Jon, however, hesitated about getting in. 
until his foreman threatened to lay hold of him with the boat¬ 
hook ; at last a rope was thrown to him, and he was pulled in 
through the surf. It was “ such Satan’s weather,” they said, 
but once clear of the breakers they were all right, and reached 
home in safety. Next day Vilhjalmur started with the birds 
for Reykjavik to take them to Herr Carl F. Siemsen, at whose 
instance this particular expedition had been undertaken; but on 
the way he met Hansen, to whom he sold them for eighty Rigs- 
bank-dollars (about <£9). According to Professor Steenstrup 
(op. cit. p. 78), the bodies are now preserved in spirit in the 
i of the University of Copenhagen, but respecting the 
timate fate of the skins I am not quite sure. 
Several other expeditions besides those to which I have here 
adverted no doubt took place between the years 1830 and 1844, 
but I cannot at present give either the dates or the results. 
Herr Siemsen informed Mr. Wolley that twenty-one birds and 
nine eggs had passed through his hands; but this account 
contains other details which are certainly inaccurate. If all the 
stories we received can be credited, the whole number would 
reach eighty-seven. I should imagine sixty to be about the 
real amount. Of these a large portion went to the Royal 
Museum at Copenhagen, as is stated by the late Etatsraad 
Reinhardt ( loc . cit .); a good many more passed into the hands 
of Herr Brandt, whose son informed Mr. Wolley that, in or 
since the year 1835, his father had had nine eggs, and I suppose 
birds to match. Two eggs were also purchased by a certain 
Snorri Ssemonasson then living at Keblavik, but what became 
of them I do not know. I have also learnt, on undoubted 
authority, that the late Herr Mechlenburg has had in all eight 
birds and three eggs*. From this naturalist, in April 1844, 
Mr. John Hancock, by the intervention of Mr. John Sewell 
of Newcastle, received a bird and an egg, which are now in his 
collection, with the information that they were taken together 
with another bird and another egg, a year or two previously, 
* Herr Pastor W. Passler has some remarks on these in the f Journal 
fur Ornithologie/ 1860, p. 59. 
