GREAT AUKS' EGGS.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 2710, 24 July 1891, Page 4

GREAT AUKS' EGGS.

The historf of the great auk (Alca ImpennW) is \ cur<ou3<>ue. As known to science, the bird had an existence of rather less than 300 years* A writer in Ea*t and West says it was first discovered in 1574 by an Icelander named Clemens, in Danell's Islands, off the east coaai of Greenland, and a large colony of the garefowl, &% it was termed, lived on the G-airfow'akerry, near Cape Reykjanes. In 1830 a volcanic eruption caused this reef to be swallowed up *by the sea, the survivors of the garcfowl escaping to the Island of Eldey. With the exception of a few stuffed bird* in different museums, and some of their egg 4 , the rest of this auk's history ia contained in scattered notices of its occurrence in the Faroe Islands, North America, and Greenland, and ©Ten on a few points of Great Britain. ITS LAST APPEABANCEB. Its last appearances on our shores -were at Papa Westiay, Orkney, 1812 ; fct.Kilda, 1822; Lundy Island, 1829 ;i and in 1844 at tbe lor.g strand of ! Castle Freke,.in Ireland, where one was picked up soaked with water after a storm, though in 18A5 a report was prevalent that a pair ha I been seen in in Belfast Bay. At Eldey, off lee-! land, a male and female were killed in 1844^ these are tbe latt known in Iceland. And so ends the romance 'of the great auk. Originally a wingless Arctic bird, it floats and dives into more Southern lat tudes till it falls under the ken of inau. 111-fitted by its habits to contend with his weapons of destruction, it gradually fades away before civilisation, and •—Nature herself seeming to aid iv its extinction — disappears altogether in 1844. As the legend which Kings- ! ley baa so gracefully embodied in the tl Water-babies " makes it come years from " Shiney "Wall, where it was decently cold, and tbe climate fit for j gentlefolks," perchance come future Arctic expedition may have the glory of rediecorerii g this bird in its original lands. Science would rejoice, but collectors would bear the news with dismay. BABITY OP ITB REMAINS. The egg of the great auk is of no particular interest. One specimen is very like another specimen, and uo amount of Contemplation of it would enable its possessor to advance our knowledge of zoology. Yet these eggs have risen to an extraordinary market value. Nearly seventy of them are known to exist, and the whereabouts of all of them has been diligently recorded in the monograph which Mr Grieve has written on the history of this bird. It is, indeed, sufficiently curious that so few specimens remains of the eggs of a bird wbicb did not become extinct until within the last half-century, and which was comparatively abundant when men still alive were capable of robbing its rude laying places. The skins are no more plentiful, about eighty being all that the most exhaustive census has been able to discover, and of these more than one-fourlh are in the museums of Great Britain. THE TALUE OF ITS EGG. The eggs bare therefore been growing valuable. In 1830 one was sold for 4s : and another, which is now in the Breslau Museum, was acquired four years later for the moderate price of a guinea. Even as late as 1840 a guinea was thought a good sum to pay, and in 1846 16 francs were all that a fair example brought. By 1860, however, £18 were being paiH, and in 1869 £64, though for many years a specimen lay unnoticed in the British Museum. In 1887 Mr Fifld acquired one which had been bought, in 1865, at a pale by the Royal College of Surgeons, wbo sold seven of tbe ten matchless eggs discovered in a box labelled " Penguins' eggs " In 1880 two others, which had also been bought as penguins' eggs, among the odds and ends of a sale, for 325, were sold for £211. Tbree years later another was purchased by Lord Lilford, tbe well-known ornithologist, for £140, and subsequently another fetched £125. Mr Field's specimen is now valued at £300. All that one sees to represent this sum is simply a pear-shaped egg, in size like a swan's, yellowish as to colour, and streaked with black and purple lines. Mr Field possesses a specimen which is even rarer than the great auk's egg, though less sought after — namely, the fossil egg of the Aepyoonis Ma%im\Uy Or giant bird of Madagascar. TBis sbell measures nearly 12in. by 9in., and weighs over 31b. Us market value in difficult to fix, but the last offered for eale was put up at a reserve price of £200. Mr Field believes that there are only five m existence, and but a few fragments of tbo colossal skeleton. The bird itself must have stood fully 17ft. in height, quite eclipsing even the mo a of New Zealand, which measured only some . 14ft. SPUniOTJS IMITATIONS. Of course imitations of these relics are in the maiket. Some of them are merely painted casts, and pretend to be nothing more than they are. But counterfeits, coloured eggs of other birds, are more difficult to detect, and arc sold with distinctly fraudulent in. tentione. There are also manufactured specimens of the bird. In the Darrm tacit Museum one of these made-up garefowls is genuine only as re&Aids its head, though so well is the bird courterfeited that it deceived! Baron I)e Selys Lonchamps in 1876. No one is Hkely to buy an imitation 6Hn without a closer scrutiny than thfringh the gla*B. But it is almost a wonder that the high prices given for eggs have not more greatly tempted ingenious people to make spurious 0 ec ; mens.— Home Paper,