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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    I believe this is the first time that the skin preserved in the Museum of M. le Baron de Yilmarest at Nielles-les- Ardes has been recorded in Britain, and Mons. H. Duchaussoy, who first drew attention to it, deserves our congratulations upon its discovery. It was to the same gentleman that I was indebted for the information that the skin that belonged to the collection of Mons. Ernest Delegorgue was amissing. I think that, although there is a missing link in the evidence, the probability is that this is the skin that I had recorded as belonging to the Hon. W. Rothschild, and figured on Plate III., p. 269. If it is not the skin from the Delegorgue collection, then it is an unknown skin, so that we have one skin at least, and perhaps two, to record as additions to my previously pub- lished lists. Additional bones, representing at least, four if not five, speci- mens, appear to have been discovered in the kitchen-middens of the coast of Ireland, as I have just recorded, so these have to be added to former lists; and also bones from Danish kitchen-middens, representing at least eight individuals. The summary of existing remains of the Great Auk or Garefowl (Alca impennis Linn.) may now be stated as follows:— Number of birds represented by the following remains— Skins . . . . 80 or 82 Skeletons, more or less complete . 23 „ 24 Detached bones 862 „ 874 Physiological preparations 2 „ 3 Eggs .... 71 „ 72 Birthplace of the late Professor J. Japetus S. Steenstrup.— From the information contained in Chambers’s ‘ Encyclopedia,’ I gave, at p. 272 of this volume, Vang, in Norway, as the birthplace of the late Professor Steenstrup. I am now in- formed that his birthplace was Vang, in Thy, north-west part of Jutland. [All changes of Alcine remains, noted by me to 31st July 1898 from 31st July 1897, are mentioned in this paper.— S. G.]
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