CHARADRIIDAE— SCOLOPACIDAE. 



It is not clear to me on what grounds such eggs (even if a whole 

 clutch is concerned) are spoken of in certain ornithological or 

 general zoological periodicals ') as „very remarkable" and „particularly 

 interesting"; this would be the case if the phenomenon began to 

 occur repeatedly (provided with a normal composition of the lime 

 shell) in a species such as liiaticiila, if it belonged to a genus or 

 family in which a bluish green ground colour was the normal one 

 of the eggs of one or more species belonging to it. 



Seebohm says -) that so far as he has been able to ascertain, the 

 birds of this species breeding in the British Isles and in Western 

 Europe, lay larger eggs than those propagating elsewhere. 



AEGIALITES ALEXANDRINUS (L.). 



F. Cerva mentions ') a clutch consisting of two eggs one of 

 which was normally coloured, but the other had a dull reddish white 

 ground colour strewn with very small reddish brown spots and 

 specks, and which when light penetrated through it showed through 

 white. As the absence of oocyanin in the very species in which it 

 occurs as a rule, is highly rare, I mention Cerva's statement here. 



RECURVIROSTRA AVOSETTA L. 



Fig. 3 on the plate in Poyntinq's Work *) shows rust-coloured 

 spots amongst the normal spots. The former, it appears to me, may 

 indeed be of an accessory nature. 



M The Zoologist (1907, p. 23). 



British Birds (Vol. II, p. 134/5). 

 -) History of British Birds, Vol. Ill, p. 20. 



8) Nidologische und oologische Beobachtungen, in „Aquila", XIV (1907). 

 ■*) Eggs of British Birds, Limicotae. Part. 1. 



