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.

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    1896-97-] February 1897 he wrote me in French, of which the following is a translation: “ You ask me for information regarding the Alca impennis which I own. It is still in my almost complete collection of European birds. It is an adult in breeding ' plumage. I even regard it as a specimen of a bird well advanced in age, the upper mandible being marked with nine, the lower with twelve furrows. It is mounted, and has no borrowed feathers. I do not know its sex. The following information was given me fifty years ago by the stuffer of the bird. He said that it was one of a colony which laid their eggs on an inaccessible islet in the vicinity of Iceland;1 that in 1830 a volcanic eruption covered this islet with its ddbris; that several specimens, dead or dying, were driven by the waves on the shores of Iceland, and were eaten; that he (my friend the stuffer) himself secured the subject of this letter while it was still alive. He kept it for several days on the ship which was returning to France; that it died on the way, and that he stuffed it during the voyage. In fact, its feathers, and the exact retention of its outlines and undulations, indicate a bird mounted while the skin was newly removed from the flesh ” (see Plate IY.) In answer to my inquiry for further information, M. Jules Yian, who is Honorary President of the Zoological Society of France, kindly replied on the 7th March 1897: “It was in 1847 that I saw for the first time the Alca impennis of which I am at present the owner. It formed part of the collection of Monsieur Oursel (father) of Havre. That col- lection was not very numerous, but it was composed of birds perfectly mounted, and indicated study of the forms, and especially of the heads. Accordingly, my Alca seems to me to have its head perfectly modelled after a bird that still retains its flesh. Monsieur Oursel, who had picked it up' in Iceland and mounted it on the return voyage, furnished me at that time with circumstantial details, but I did not take any notes, as I did not then imagine that the bird would become part of my collection. I have nothing but recollec- tions of fifty years ago, and my memory, which has been at 1 This evidently refers to the Geirfuglasker, off Reykjanes, South-West Iceland, which became submerged during a volcanic eruption in 1830.—See ‘Great Auk or Garefowl,’ p. 20.
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