In 1888 an egg of a great auk was sold for one hundred and sixty guineas, whilst more recently an egg of the same species fetched two hundred and twenty-five pounds; and although these may seem enormous sums to give for a relic, the transactions are not without others to keep them in countenance. Only a few years ago two eggs of the same kind fetched one hundred and one hundred and two guineas respectively; while the egg first named realised thirty-three pounds ten shillings a little over twenty years ago. At that time it was discovered, together with four others, packed away in a dust-covered box in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, these being sold in 1865. From this it would seem that in the ornithological market the complete shell of a great auk's egg is worth nearly one hundred and seventy pounds, and a broken one only seventy pounds less. It will be seen that the purchase of one of these may be a good investment; and what a mine of wealth a great auk that was a good layer might prove to its fortunate possessor can only be conjectured. At the present time the number of eggs of this species known to exist is sixty-six, twenty-five of which are in museums and forty-one in private collections. Of the total number forty-three are retained in Great Britain. When a bird becomes so rare that the individual remains can be counted, the same may be taken to be practically extinct as a species. The great auk has pursued a policy of extinction for the past two or three centuries, until now, like the mighty moa and the dodo, it has ceased to exist. The great auk, or gare-fowl, was one of those birds which, from long disuse, had lost at once the power of flight and preservation. It was a great shambling bird, as large as a goose, and ill adapted to travel on land. How these things told against it may be inferred from the story of one Captain Richard Whitbourne, who writing of the discovery of Newfoundland in 1620, says that among the abundant water-fowl of these parts are penguins (great auks) "as bigge as geese, and flye not, for they have but a short wing, and they multiply so infinitely, upon a certain flat island, that men drive them from thence upon a boord, into their boats by hundreds at a time." This process of extinction went on in Iceland and elsewhere until about the middle of the present century hardly any birds remained. The Icelanders robbed the auks of their eggs for domestic use, and upon one occasion the crew of a British privateer remained upon one of the skerries all day killing many birds and treading down their eggs and young. This went on until the last birds were taken, and there is but the faintest hope that it may yet linger on in the inaccessible North. Although awkward, and travelling with the greatest difficulty on land, the great auk was perfectly at home in the water, and travelled both upon and under the surface with the rapidity of a fish. The time of haunting the land was during the breeding