INTRODUCTION. 
Tlie following notes are intended to place on perma¬ 
nent record the particulars as to date, ownership, price 
and name of purchaser of the various specimens of the 
Great Auk fPlautus impcnnisj , and of eggs of this 
species, which have come to public auction at 38 King 
Street, Covent Garden, London, an d at other Auction- 
rooms in Great Britain. The Great Booms, at 38 
King Street, Covent Garden, were established in 1760, 
and afterwards became the business premises of Mr. John 
Grace Stevens, and will be referred to as Stevens’ Rooms 
throughout, as by this name they are so well known to 
ornithologists, oologists and collectors of objects of 
Natural History. 
There have been—so far as I am able to ascertain, 31 
sales in which specimens of the Great Auk or its eggs 
have been put up for auction, and at these sales 
five individual mounted specimens and twenty-six differ¬ 
ent eggs have been under the hammer, but, as many of 
the specimens have come before the public on more than 
one occasion, and as, with the exception of one bird and 
two eggs, every specimen mentioned in my brochure, has 
at one time or another appeared at these Rooms, I think 
it best to deal first of all with the sales there, taken in 
chronological order, and then with the sales by public 
auction, which have taken place elsewhere. 
The first sale that I have been able to trace in which 
a Great Auk or an egg of this species came to the hammer 
by public auction, is that of a mounted specimen of the 
bird, once the property of Sir Ashton Lever, disposed of 
at the sale of the Leverian Museum, in the museum build¬ 
ing* on the Surrey side of Blackfriars Bridge, on May 5th, 
1806. The bird was bought by Mr. Edward Donovan, 
for his Museum in Catherine Street, Strand; and the first 
specimen of the Great Auk, or of an egg, sold by auction 
at Steven’s Rooms, is, curiously enough, the same bird 
bought by Mr. Donovan at the Leverian Museum 
