GREAT AUK’S EGGS WORTH £8000 A DOZEN

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22941, 9 May 1949, Page 2

GREAT AUK’S EGGS WORTH £BOOO A DOZEN

A Great Auk’s egg will be auctioned in London shortly. Its market value is set at £ 650 or more. And, the Great Auk may not, „as is assumed, be extinct, writes a special correspondent in the Sydney Morning Herald. Eggs -don’t have to be new laid to make you a fortune—-if they happen to be Great Auk’s eggs!

A few generations ago, the clumsy penguin-like bird was not at. all uncommon. It waddled about on remote little islands and, since its meat was tender, was occasionally clubbed to death by parties of raiding sailors. Yet 100 years have passed since the last Great Auk was captured by the fishermen of St. KildaThey tied it by one leg to a stake. For two days the great bird languished without food. Then a storm greater than any in living memory, lashed itself against the St. Kilda coast. “This gale is the work of the witch we have caught,” said the fishermen. “She shall die . . . ’’and they stoned the unfortunate bird to death.

Had they kept its corpse and stuffed it, it would today be worth £9OO, for there are only 79 stuffed specimens in existence —unless you happen to cherish one in an old attic, not knowing its true value.

Even if you have a Great Auk’s egg —by no means large—it’s worth its weight in gold. One lucky finder, a'Mr. Shirley, read an article which informed him that the French name for the bird was “Pingouin,” and its eggs were consequently often labelled ‘‘Penguin.” Mr. Shirley sat bold upright in his chair- In his back yard, housed in an old conservatory, was a collection of old relics brought together by his grandfather. Among the curios was an egg labelled “Penguin”—a puzzling egg, for it seemed too large to be the product of any normal penguin. The startled finder rushed it to a museum. Sure enough, it was a Great Auk’s egg. It brought £262 in the saleroom.

Prices Continually Rising

But Great Auk prices are continually rising. Even the eminent members of the London Royal College of Surgeons were hoodwinked by that "penguin’ label way back in 1865. When they discovered the truth they sold their ten Auk’s eggs for £3O apiece. Four years later a Scotsman bought a box of bird’s eggs at a sale in Edinburgh. The lot cost only 325. Yet two Auk’s eggs were among them. Even* more romantic is the story of young Master Hewitt, a 16-year-old schoolboy who had his wits about him. Pressing his nose against a glass case in a museum one Sunday he looked at a plaster cast of an auk’s egg and marvelled at the value of a real egg. Three days later he wandered into an auction sale.

Among the items was a box of seashells and sailor’s rubbish, offered complete in one lot. Among the rubbish young Hewitt spotted an . auk’s egg.

He counted his money desperately. He had only 16s and a bicycle. But this chance was too good to missWhen the lot came up Hewitt offered his bids.

“Sixteen shillings!” said the auctioneer at last.

“Seventeen and six!” snapped a female voice. 1 Hewitt looked around to see an ! elderly, determined-looking spinster bidding against him. Recklessly he gambled with money he did not possess. Up went the price, thirty shillings, thirty-two, till the spinster squeaked with a note of finality, “Thirty-five shillings!” “Thirty-six!” thinking he could leave his bicycle as security with the auctioneer as long as he got the eggs. The lot was his, and then the spinster approached him. “I do so want the shells.” she said- “Will you take a pound for them?” “Certainly,” gasped the boy and rushed home with the spoil. Ahdhe bottom of the box he found auk’s egg. The two were subsequelpHl auctioned for hundreds of pounds. » May Still Live If you capture a Great Auk alive, £IO,OOO would not be high as a price. And it is possible the bird still lives . . . for the Great Auk has been seen. Edward Valpy. the great naturalist, rented 50.000 acres of bogland and seacoast within the rim of the Arctic Circle to study the habits of northern birds.

He was sitting outside his wooden hut turning over the pages of a birdbook one day and chanced to linger over a coloured illustration of a Great Auk.

His Norwegian carpenter leaned over his shoulder and cried excitedly: “Why, that’s the strange bird we saw under the sheds this morning. My mate and I tried to catch him, but he dived like a fish.’

“It can’t be possible,” returned Valpy, incredulously. “The last of those birds was killed in 1849!”

But the carpenter stuck to his story, and Valpy called his mate to go through the book and identify the bird he had seen that day. Slowly the man turned the pages till he came to the picture of the Great Auk. His identification was certain. They had lost £IO,OOO through not “getting the bjrd!”