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.

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    This egg was depicted as fig. B, PI. VI,, in Baron d’Hamonville’s “Note sur les qnatre cents d'Alca impermis appartenant a notre Collection Oologique,” (Memoires Soc. Zool. de France, 1888, pp. 101— 104), and the following remarks on the egg were given by the Baron in his “ Addition a line note sur les quatres oeufs du Pingouin brachyptere” (Memoires Soc. Zool. de France, 1891, p. 35). “ Blanche VI., figure B. Get oeuf provient, com me les deux suivants de la collection du feu Raoul de Barace. II porte, presque au sommet du gros pole une bande transversale, ayant environ six millimetres de largeur, de couleur roux pale, et presque circulaire. En raison de cette regularity et de sa nuance rouille, je croyais tout d’abord que cette tache etait accidentelle ; aussi, l’ai-je omise sur la planche ; mais M. Edward Bidwel [sic], specialiste experiments, qui est venu d’Angleterre en Lorraine, expres, pour visiter mes collections, pense, au contraire, qu’elle est naturelle, et quelques essais tentes avec des reactifs m'ont prouve qu’il doit avoir raison. Je signale done cette omission dans la planche qui, pour tout le reste, est absolument exacte. Ce specimen, et celui designe sur lalettre C viennent d’Islande, comme M. de Barace nous l’apprend dans une lettre adressee par lui, le 13 janvier. 1867, a M. Rowley, ou il lui dit les avoir regus. plus de trente ans auparavant (soit vers 1834 ou 1835), d’un armateur qui habitait Saint-Malo. Dans mon premier article, j'ai dit que j’avals lieu de croire que e’etait M. Hardy, armateur de peche a Dieppe, et ornithologue distingue, qui devait avoir fourni ces oeufs a M. de Barace: mais comme il m’a ete impossible de m’assurer si M. Hardy avait ete, dans sa jeunesse, armateur a St.-Malo avant de l’etre a Dieppe, ce point, sans grand importance d’ailleurs, ne peut etre exactement elucide.” Translation. “Addition to my note on the four eggs of the Great Auk in my collection which appeared in the Bulletin of the Zoological Society of France for 1888, cf. the Society’s Bulletin for 1891, p. 35.” “ Plate VI. figure B. This egg came as did the next two [depicted as figures C. and D.] from the collection of the late Raoul de Barace. It lias on the larger end a transverse band, nearly six millimetres in breadth, and of a pale red-brown colour and almost circular. On account of this regularity and its rust - coloured look, I thought at first that the mark might be accidental, so I omitted putting it in the figure: Mr. Bidwell, however, who has special knowledge of such matters, and who came from England to Lorraine, on purpose to see my collection, thinks that it is natural. I therefore beg to notify this omission in the figure of it on the plate, [VI. fig. B.]. the markings, however, on the rest of the egg are absolutely correct. This specimen and the one marked C, [on the same plate] came from Iceland, as M. de Barace informs us, in a letter written by him 13th January, 1867, to Mr. Rowley, in which he says he received them more than thirty years ago (1834 or 1835), from a shipowner of St. Malo In my first article [Bull. French Zool. Soc. 1888] I said that I had reason to believe that it was M Hardy, owner of a fishing vessel at Dieppe, and a well-known ornithologist, who had furnished M. de Barace with these eggs, but I cannot be sure if M. Hardy had been in his younger days a shipowner at St. Malo before going to Dieppe, this is of little consequence, and the matter cannot be decided with any certainty.” I have been informed by Mr. Bidwell. that the above remarks by the Baron d’Hamonville with regard to the transverse band are not quite correct.