14 
translation. Bulletin of the Zoological Society of France, 1891, 
p. 34. ‘ Addition to a note on four eggs of the Great Auk, by Baron 
Louis d’Hamonville This specimen came from the collection of 
Mr. Yarrell, where I saw it in 1857. I presumed that it came from the 
Orkneys, because when showing it to me, its owner said: ‘ It is an 
English egg.’ This however is not so and *Mr. Newton has informed 
me that the expression used by Mr. Yarrell meant, not that it had been 
taken in Great Britain, but that the species was included in the English 
fauna. The history belonging to the egg is also well known, and I 
reproduce what Mr. Newton wrote me in one of his letters: — ‘ The late 
Mr. Yarrell was one of my oldest ornithological friends, I saw him 
constantly, and he often repeated to me the story about this egg, how 
he had bought it in France, in Paris, I believe, from a small shop-keeper, 
in whose window he had seen it hanging on a string in company with 
some other commoner birds’ eggs. Recognizing at "once the species to 
which it belonged he entered the shop and asked the price of the eggs 
as a lot. He was told that the eggs were a franc each, but that the 
larger egg would be two francs on account of its size. He paid the 
money and carried off the Great Auk’s egg in his hat. 
Mr. Hewitson in his British Oology (1888) figures this egg on pi. 
CXLV, a faithful representation, but from the opposite side to which 
mine was taken.” 
In the translation which I have made, I have thought it best to 
spell Mr. Yarrell’s name properly. 
Mr. Symington Grieve in “The Great Auk or Garefowl,” gives 
on p. 105, another account of how Mr. Yarrell acquired this egg. 
“ The following curious story, which is well-known to ornithologists, 
is so remarkable that we repeat it and give a copy of Mr. R. Champley’s 
original note, dated 1st June 1860 : — ‘Mr. Bond says to R. C., that 
Yarrell told him that walking near a village near Boulogne, he met a 
fishwoman having some guillemots’ eggs, he asked her if she had any 
more, she said she had at her house. He went, when he saw hanging 
over the chimney piece four wild swans’, with a Great Auk’s hanging 
in the centre. She asked two francs each for them. He bought the 
Great Auk's and the two swans’. She said her husband brought it 
from the fisheries ’ . . . Copied by R. Cliampley at Mr. Bonds’ by 
whom the history was told.” 
Professor Newton’s account is however, almost certain to be the 
true one. He had, as he states in his letter to Baron d’Hamonville, 
heard the story repeated to him on several occasions by Mr, Yarrell 
himself. 
* The late Professor Alfred Newton, F.R.S 
