Supplementary note on the great auk or garefowl (Alca impennis Linn) / by Symington Grieve.

  • Grieve, Symington.
Date:
[between 1890 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Supplementary note on the great auk or garefowl (Alca impennis Linn) / by Symington Grieve. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/72 page 249
    1896-97-] of Paris and London, who sold it to Mr Leopold Field, 25 Brodrick Load, London, S.W., who offered it for £300 to the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh. Before sanction could be obtained from the Department at South Kensington for its purchase it was sold by the owner to Mr Rowland Ward, 166 Piccadilly, London—it was understood for £315. In a letter, dated 23rd December 1896, Mr Ward informs me that he paid 600 guineas for this skin and the Potts egg. The skin is still in the possession of Mr Ward; but the Museum at Tring will eventually be its resting-place, as it has been pur- chased by the Hon. W. Rothschild.1 I had an opportunity of examining this skin when sent to Edinburgh on approbation. It was not in very good condition, but I understand has since then been thoroughly overhauled anj put in as good order as possible. It appears to me to be exceedingly interesting, for the following reasons. It is the skin of an immature bird, and probably represents the third youngest specimen of the Great Auk known. The youngest bird known is in the Museum of Natural History at Newcastle- on-Tyne. The next youngest is probably the immature specimen in the Bohemian National Museum at Prague, Austria (fig. 8, plate 59, Yogel Europa’s, Dr Anton Fritsch) (see Plate II.) The next in order of age is the specimen we are now writing about. Very few immature skins seem to have been preserved by the original collectors, as there is little doubt that large skins, those of adult birds, were most valued, as being more saleable, until it was realised that the Great Auk was on the verge of extinction. No. 2.—This skin was in the collection of Count David de Riocour at Yitry-le-Frangois, and is referred to at p. 79 and App. p. 24, ‘ Great Auk or Garefowl.’ During 1887 Mr G. A. Frank, London, had some corres- 1 This is not either of the cwo skins recorded, ‘ Great Auk or Garefowl,’ p. 79, and App. p. 7, as being in the Ducal Museum of Natural History, Brunswick, for both skins are still there, as the Director, Professor Dr Wilhelm Blasius, kindly informs me in a letter dated 30th January 1897. Neither is it the skin recorded as being in the Town Zoological Museum, Mainz (‘ Great Auk or Gare- fowl,’ p. 79, and App. p. 16). The Curator, Herr Wilhelm von Reichman, in answer to my incpiiries, was good enough to write me from the Natural History Musenm, Mainz, 15th April 1897, “We have in the Museum at Mainz a most beautiful exemplar of Aim impennis.
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