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.

    57/72 page 329
    IS97-9S.] On 28th December 1897 Mons. H. Duchaussoy kindly re- plied to my inquiries as follows : “ I have the honour of sending you some new information regarding the Great Auk which formed part of M. Ernest Delegorgues collection. This collection, which was in bad condition, was on the death of M. Delegorgue given to the town of Abbeville, with the exception of two interesting specimens—the Snow Harfang (Great Snowy Owl) and the Great Auk, which was kept by M. Jules Bar- bieux, now dead. His son-in-law, M. Paul Holtzapffel, judge of the civil tribunal, Rue de la Tannerie, has kindly written an interesting letter to me, from which I extract for you the following passage: “ The following entry has been found in the books of my father-in-law under the date July 17, 1888, ‘Received from M. Maingonnat for a bird, 1000 francs.’ It is certainly the Alca impennis of Delegorgue which was sold for 1000 francs to M. Maingonnat.”1 As I was anxious to find out when Mr Leopold Field bought the skin now belonging to the Hon. W. Rothschild, I wrote him requesting some information, and he kindly replied on 6th January 1898 : “ The skin was offered to me, I think, in the early summer of 1890. Mons. Boucard said it was a different skin to the one he first offered by letter at £1000.2 Finally he came down to £300 (three hundred pounds), which I gave. The whole transaction and correspondence did not occupy a month. The final date would be June or July 1890. I paid £300 net cash, delivered at my rooms, and in 1893 sold it and the Potts egg to Mr Rowland Ward, Picca- dilly, for £630. The specimen came unmounted, with little spikes in the feet. I had it handsomely displayed in a glass case, with a model egg and a background of sea and sky. Mr Rowland Ward had all the papers relative to the skin and egg” This skin was removed from its case and sent by Mr L. 1 Mons. H. Duchaussoy, in his “Notes Additionelles,” published in 1898, in a note to p. 8, says that M. Maingonnat, who resided at 37 Rue Richer, Paris, died in 1893, and that his business of merchant of natural history wares has not been continued. 2 The skin for which Mons. Boucard wanted £1000 is presumably the skin now in the collection of the Hon. W. Rothschild, which he bought from Mons. Boucard, and which came from the collection of Count David de Riocour, Vitry- le-Francois.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3