150 THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB
in the British Isles (see Symington Grieve's "Great Auk," p. 77).1 The note
made by Dr. Bree on this bird is, "a fine specimen well set up, and in good con-
dition. I had it removed and examined. The only marks upon it were No. 2/32 in
red ink on the back. Prof. Newton thinks it probable it was obtained from a
dealer in Hamburgh, who was the last of his trade known to have sold speci-
mens." The measurements of the Hoy specimen, taken outside the glass case,
are as follows :—
One of the members present at the meeting, Mr. Murray Tuke, of Saffron
Walden, is the possessor of an egg of the Great Auk, a specimen mentioned first
by Hewitson in his "Coloured Illustrations of the Eggs of British Birds" (1846)
Grieve says that it was purchased from Reid of Doncaster, who bought it from F.
Schulz, of Dresden, for £2 6s. The value of the eggs have immensely increased.
of late years. No recent sales of the bird itself have occurred, but in December,
1887, an egg belonging to the Rev. H. Burney, of Woburn, Bedfordshire, was
sold in Stevens' rooms to Mr. L. Field for £168. This specimen was one of
four duplicates sold in the same rooms in 1865 by the Council of the Royal
College of Surgeons, and for which Mr. Burney gave £31 10s. But these prices
were soon much exceeded. On March 12th, 1888, an egg belonging to Mrs.
Wise (inherited from her father, Mr. Holland, who had purchased it in 1851 for
£18 from Williams, of Vere Street, the egg coming originally from Lefevre, of
Paris) was sold by Mr. Stevens to Mr. J. Gardner, of Oxford Street, acting on
behalf of a collector, for the astonishing sum of £225. Mr. Gardner still has
a coloured drawing of this egg. From these prices of the eggs some idea may be
formed of the probable sale value of a good specimen of the bird should one ever
come into the market.
Another very interesting bird in the collection is the first British-killed
specimen of the Pectoral Sandpiper (Fringa pectoralis) which was shot on
Breydon Broad on October 17th, 1830, and recorded by Mr. Hoy in the
"Magazine of Natural History" for 1837 (N.S., vol. i., p. 116). See Stevens's
"Birds of Norfolk," vol. ii., p. 367, and Babington's "Birds of Suffolk," p. 24c,
where the specimen is figured.
Among the rarer birds are two Ospreys, a pair of Common Kites, a Swallow-
tailed Kite, a Cream-coloured Courser', and the Great Bustard (male and female)
which Mr. Lescher informed us were from Wiltshire.2
1 "The Great Auk or Garefowl (Alca impennis, L.). Its History, Archaeology, and Remains."
By Symington Grieve. (London, 1885.)
2 Mr. Harting has called attention to a curious passage in Dr. Muffett's "Health's Improve-
ment '' (4to, 1655, p. 91), which has been generally overlooked by writers on British birds, but
which testifies to the abundance of the Bustard in Wilts in the time of Queen Elizabeth. Dr.
Muffett, whose book was published long after his death (he died in 1590), was a pensioner of
the Earl of Wilton, and lived at Bulbridge, in Wiltshire. He wrote of the Bustard, in the
passage alluded to above : "In the summer, towards the ripening of corn, I have seen half a
dozen of them lie in a wheatfield fattening themselves (as a deer will doe) with ease and eating,
whereupon they grow sometimes to such a bigness, that one of them weighed almost fourteen
pound."—Ed.