The great auk : a record of sales of birds and eggs by public auction in Great Britain, 1806-1910 : with historical and descriptive notes ... / by Thomas Parkin.

  • Parkin, Thomas, 1845-
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The great auk : a record of sales of birds and eggs by public auction in Great Britain, 1806-1910 : with historical and descriptive notes ... / by Thomas Parkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    16/46 (page 10)
    Egg X. - “ Lot 200b. Ditto.” Also obtained by Lord Lilford for - £107 2 O These two Eggs were sent up to Stevens’ Rooms by Mr. Robert Small, a dealer in natural history wares, of George Street, Edinburgh, who bought them for thirty-two shillings at Dowells' Rooms in that town, about two months previously—vide “Sales otherwise than at Stevens’ Rooms,” pp. 32 and 33. Lord Lilford had m his possession at one time five eggs of the Great Auk. He gave four of them, including these two, to Professor Alfred Newton, of Magdalene College, Cambridge. The eggs are now in the collection of the University Museum of Zoology. The late Professor in Ootheca Wolleyana, p. 377, gives the following interesting account. “ These two eggs [Nos. IX. and X ] of four given to me by Lord Lilford, were bought by him in Mr. Stevens’ auction room, 2nd July, 1880, whither they had been sent for sale by Mr. Small, of Edinburgh, who himself had bought them for thirty-two shillings at a miscellaneous sale of the property of a Mr. W. Cleghorn Murray, of 3 Clarendon Street, in Mr. Dowell’s auction room in that city, 8th May, 1880, no one else present having any notion of their value. The first intimation 1 had of the discovery of these specimens, hitherto unknown to naturalists, was contained in a letter from Colonel (then Captain) Feilden, who by mere chance was prevented from being present. He lost no time in attempting to trace the history of these eggs and therein was materially assisted by Mr, Harvie-Brown. As usual the investigation was beset by many difficulties. At first it appeared that a former possessor had been a Mr. Little, a literary gentleman, who some thirty years before lived in Lauriston Lane in Edinburgh, where according to a Mr. Stillie. a bookseller, he had a most ‘ extraordinary collection of eggs ’; but subsequently Mr. Harvie-Brown made out that these eggs had undoubtedly belonged to a Mr. Joseph Moule, from 1820-40 President of the Post Office at Edinburgh, one-half of whose collection containing these specimens was sold to Mr. Murray, the possessor of them until 1880, though Mr. Grieve in his monograph (‘The Great Auk or Garefowl,' etc.. London, 1885, p. 109) declares that Mr. Murray bought them of a Mr. Lister. The question of the intermediate ownership of these eggs is comparatively unimportant. I have been informed that on their acquisition by Mr. Small, the word “Pingouin’’ was plainly visible upon each, but that he (for some reason unknown to me) did his best to efface it, so that it is no longer legible, but he fortunately left upon them the mysterious inscription “ Egal ” or “ Egale ’’—whatever that may mean. These words plainly indicate that the eggs had passed through French hands, and one can hardly help connecting them with the two eggs some years since found to exist in the Edinburgh Museum, which are known to have come from *Dufresne’s collection bought by the *The ‘ Ibis,’ 1869, pp. 358-60, contains an interesting letter fiom Col. [then Captain] H. W. Feilden, C.B., on the purchase in 1818, by the Edinburgh University of a portion of the Dufresne collections. Dufresne was originally a dealer in natural history specimens and had also been for some time Conservator of the Cabinet of Natural History belonging to the Emprtss Josephine, but in 1815 or the following year he entered the Museum of Faris, as Aiue-naturaliste, in which capacity it was that he parted with the collection obtained by the University of Edinburgh, and it remained the property of the University till it was transferred to the newly-established Museum of Science and Art at Edinburgh.