222 NATURAL HISTORY. 



I cannot help coming to the conclusion that four is the normal number of eggs 

 laid by this bird, and that whenever a greater number has been found, it is th« 

 joint production of two or more birds. 



I do not remember seeing the fact noticed anywhere that these birds often 

 deposit their eggs on a heap of floating weeds without preparing any nest at all. 



It would be interesting if other zoologists would state if their experiences 

 coincide with mine or not. 



H. E. B. 



NOTE ON REVERSION TO PRIMITIVE TYPES. 

 By R. A. Sterndale. 



I have mentioned in the Mammalia of India, quoting from a writer in the 

 India Sporting Review, a case of cross-breeding between jackals and dogs, 

 in which in the third generation, or one-eighth jackal and seven-eighths dog, 

 three out of five pups had gone back to the jackal type. I have s-ince then 

 been noticing cases of reversion in domestic cats'. We have an English, or 

 rather Scotch, black cat which we brought out from home three years ago. 

 Her first kittens in India were all white, with patches of the usual Indian 

 grey or Indian tabby, which consists of small spots in lines on a grey ground. 

 We destroyed all except two, a son and daughter, the latter a very pretty cat, 

 with decidedly English points about her : this cat, in her third family of the 

 usual grey-and-white kind, bad one very handsome tabby kitten, which, with 

 a white one, was kept. Now this tabby kitten, who was Darned, " Joe," because 

 like Dickens' fat boy, he was always sleepy, a f terwards softened into "Joey," 

 turned out a true English tabby, a type I have never seen in India (see the 

 sketch I have given of him in this journal), and a tabby of a very handsome 

 kind, unusually so. Were he to escape in suitable jungles and be shot, he 

 would probably, but for his tail, be identified as Felis marmorata, for he is 

 nearer in colouring to tint species than any domestic cat I have come across. 

 Even pure English tabbies have, like their remote ancestor the wild cat (Felis 

 catus), certain stripes down the side?, but Joey, with the exception of the 

 bars on his limbs, is clouded like the Rimaudaban (Felis diardi), or the 

 smaller marbled cat [F. marmorata). English tabbies do occasionally have 

 their side markings in irregular concentric circles, but the colour of the 

 ground-work is generally grey instead of Fandy fulvou?. However I take it 

 that Joey gets his Joseph's coat of many colours from his Eoglish ancestor 

 and not from his Asiatic grandfather. He is a queer tempered cat, shy 

 with most people, although his sisters and his cousins and his aunts will go 

 to anybody ; but he is devoted to me, and at times will not leave me for 

 a moment. Lately, whilst laid up with the fever which has delayed the issue 

 of this journal, I had to keep to bed for a day or two and Joey never left 

 my side, and his meals had to be brought into my room. 



Now to go back to Joey's grandmother, the old black Scotch cat. For two 

 years-and-a-balf she had a constant succession of grey-and-white kittent' 

 between twenty and thirty, and we wondered why none of her children 

 resembled her. Lately however, out of a batch of five, three were jet black. 



