The Aberdeen University Great Auk Egg
By Martyn Gorman, Honorary Curator of Zoology Museum
The public have a very rare opportunity to see one of the great treasures of the University Zoology Museum, an egg of the extinct great auk Pinguinus impennis.
The egg, which is not normally on display and which has not been seen in public for many years, will be a centrepiece in a new exhibition being mounted by the University.
The exhibition, on the theme Extinction, will be in the Marischal Museum, and will run from May 5 until July 2005
The egg was at one time in the French Royal collections and is inscribed 'Pingouin', the French name for the great auk.
The inscription was written by Monsieur Dufresne, keeper of the King's cabinet in Paris in the early nineteenth century.
From 1847 to 1863 the egg was in the hands of a Monsieur J. Hardey of Dieppe, a ship-owner and noted ornithologist. Hardy bequeathed the egg to his son Michel who loaned it to the Dieppe museum.
Michel's daughter, Madame Ussel of Eu, put the egg up for auction at Steven's Rooms in London in London on February 9 1909.
With the financial support of Lord Strathcona, Mr Hay Fenton of Lombard Street London acquired the egg for 190 guineas (£199.50) and two days later presented it to the Natural History Department of Aberdeen University.
Large breeding colonies of the flightless great auk once gathered on rocky islands and coasts of the North Atlantic in Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the British Isles and Scandinavia. A strong swimmer, the great auk migrated to winter as far south as Florida and southern Spain. Its extermination began with a slaughter for food and eggs by local inhabitants, but its fate was sealed when bird feathers became fashion items.
On June 4, 1844, three fishermen named Jon Brandsson, Sigurdr Islefsson and Ketil Ketilsson made a trip to the Icelandic island of Eldey.
They had been hired by a collector named Carl Siemsen who wanted auk specimens.
Jon Brandsson found an auk and killed it. Sigurdr Islefsson found another and did the same. Ketil Ketilsson had to return empty handed because his companions had just completed the extinction of the great auk.
Also on display will be a fine life-size copy of Professor William Macgillivray’s watercolour painting of the great auk.
The painting, created in 1839, is from a preserved specimen belonging to the great American artist J.J.
Drawn to accompany his 5 volumes on British birds, MacGillivray's watercolours are stunning works of art and he captured the remarkable Great Auk with his delicate touch, while retaining scientific accuracy. The original is now housed in the Natural History Museum, London.