Sales by Public Auction of Mounted Specimens 
and of Eggs of the Great Auk, which have 
taken place elsewhere in Great Britain than at 
38 King Street, Covent Garden (Stevens’ Rooms). 
MOUNTED SPECIMEN I. 
(Sale number twenty-seven.) 
A mounted specimen of the Great Auk, on May 5th, 1806, at the 
dispersal by public auction of the contents of the Leverian Museum, 
in the Museum Building, on the Surrey side of Blackfriars Bridge. 
Described in the sale catalogue as : 
Bird I. - “ Lot 47. LARGEST AUK Alca impennis." 
Bought by Mr. Edward Donovan, for his Museum 
(c/. p. 5) at Catherine Street, Strand, for £10 10 O 
(“The Leverian Museum was the property of Sir Ashton Lever, a Lancashire 
gentleman of old family, long settled near Manchester. Begun by him in his 
youth, it soon reached enormous proportions, and though a man of fortune he 
found himself greatly embarrassed by the amount he had spent. In hopes of 
making some profit he removed his collection to London, to a house in Leicester 
Square, supposed tohave been that which is now known as Saville House. It was 
thrown open to the public on payment of an admission fee in or about 1775, and 
became for some years a fashionable resort After a time its popularity 
decreased and people neglected poor Sir Ashton’s Museum, which it is said cost 
him £30,000 to form. His creditors became clamorous and he was anxious to 
sell. I have heard that it was offered to the Trustees of the British Museum, 
but the government of the day would not look at it. Finally a private lottery 
(those were the days of lotteries) was arranged for its disposal, and in 1785. the 
prize was drawn by Mr. James Parkinson, a dentist, who took not the least 
interest in Natural History Museums. A building was however put up for it on 
the Surrey side of Blackfriars Bridge, but it failed to draw, owing to the 
unsuitableness of the spot. Things grew worse and worse with Mr. Parkinson, 
and at last in 1806 the Museum was sold by auction piecemeal. The sale went 
on at intervals from the 5th May to the 19th July, lasting for 62 days, and the 
number of lots was 7,524 [about the same number as in the Bullock sale]. Among 
the names of the buyers are several which are well known as those of the chief 
naturalists of the time—Pennant, Latham. Hawath, Macleay, Donovan, and 
*• Thompson,” under which name a good many purchases were effected for the 
then Lord Stanley, who afterwards became thirteenth Earl Derby and President 
of the Zoological Society, and formed that magnificent collection which at his 
death in 1851, he bequeathed to the town (of Liverpool. There also occurs very 
frequently the name of Fichtel, a naturalist, who acted as commissioner for the 
Emperor Francis I. of Austria, and secured a large number of specimens for the 
Imperial Museum of Vienna, where as Herr August Von Pelzeln has informed 
us [/bis, 1873, p. 14] most of them still remain. But there was no representative 
of the British Museum, and this is the more to be regretted since the Leverian 
Museum contained the greater part of the specimens, whether Zoological or 
Ethnological, that were collected on the three memorable voyages of Captain 
Cook, specimens which were of inestimable value, and are (for fortunately 
some of them still exist) very properly so regarded by their present custodians, 
