COLLECTION OF NESTS AND EGGS. 53^ 



and rinsed, eggs should be gently wiped dry, and set hole dt»wnward on blotting-paper to 

 ilraiu.i Broken eggs may be neatly mended, sometimes with a film of collodion, or 'a bit of 

 tissue paper and paste, or the edges may be shnply stuck together with any adhesive substance. 

 Even when fragmentary a rare egg is worth preserving. Eggs should ordinarily be left empty ; 

 indeed, the only case in which any filling is admissible is that of a defective specimen to which 

 s )me slight solidity can be imparted with cotton. It is unnecessary even to close up the hole. 

 It is best, on all accounts, to keep eggs in sets, a " set" being the natural clutch, or whatever 

 less number was taken from a nest. The most scrupulous attention must be paid to accurate, 

 complete, and permanent labelling. So important is this, that the undeniable defacing of a 

 specimen, by writing on it, is no ofi'set to the advantages accruing from such fixity of record. 

 It is practically impossible to attach a label, as is done with a bird-skin, and a loose label is 

 always in danger of being lost or displaced. Write on the shell, then, as many items as 

 possible ; if done neatly, on the side in which the hole was bored, at least one good " show side '' 

 remains. An egg should always bear the same number as the parent, in the collector's 

 record. In a general collection, where separate ornithological and oological registers are kept, 

 identification of egg with parent is nevertheless readily secured, by making one the numerator 

 the other the denominator of a fraction, to be simply inverted in its respective application. 

 Thus, bird No. 456, and egg No.- 123, are identified by making the former -fff the latter -J^f. 

 All the eggs of a clutch should have the same number. If the shell be large enough, th« name 

 of the species should be written on it ; if too small, it should be accompanied by a label, and 

 may have the name indicated by a number referring to a certain catalogue. According to my 

 " Check List," for example, "No. 1 " would indicate Turclus migratorius. The date of collec- 

 tion is a highly desirable item; it may be abbreviated thus ; 3 | 6 | 82 means June 3, 1882. It 

 is well to iiave the egg authenticated by the collector's initials at least. Since " sets " of eggs 

 may be broken up for distributions to other cabinets, yet permanent indication of the size of 

 the clutch be Avauted, it is well to have some method. A good one is to write the number of 

 the clutch on each egg composing it, giving each egg of the set, moreover, its individual 

 number. Supposing for example the clutch No. ^-|i contained five eggs ; one of them would 

 be -Jll I 5 I 1 : the next \^ I 5 | 2, and so on. But it should be remembered that all such 

 arbitrary memoranda must be systematic, and be accompanied by a key. Eggs may be kept 

 in cabinets of shallow drawers in little pasteboard trays, each holding a set, and containing a 

 paper label on which various items that cannot be traced on the shell are written in full. 



' Jieivf arcing the Eggshell before Blowing. — Fig. 8 " shows a piece of paper, a number of which, when gummed 

 on to an egg, one over the other, and left to dry, strengthen the shell in snch a manner that the instruments above 

 described can be introduced through the aperture in the middle and worked to the best advantage, and thus a 

 fully formed embryo may be cut up, and the pieces extracted through a very moderately 

 sized hole ; the number of thicknesses required depends, of course, greatly upon the size 

 of the egg, the length of time it has been incubated, and the stoutness of the shell and 

 the paper Five or six is the least number that it is safe to use. Each piece should be 

 left to dry before the next is gummed on. The slits in the margin cause them to set 

 pretty smoothly, which will be found very desirable ; the aperture in the middle of each 

 may be cut out first, or the whole series of layers may be drilled through when the hole 

 is made in the egg. For convenience' sake, the papers may be prepared already gummed, 

 and moistened when put on (in the same way that adhesive postage labels are used). 

 Doubtless, patches of linen or cotton cloth would answer equally well. When the opera- 

 tion is over, a slight application of water (especially if warm) through the syringe will -prQ. 8. — Nat. size, 

 loosen them so that they can be easily removed, and they can be separated from one 



another, and dried to serve another time. The size represented in the sketch is that siutable for an egg of mod- 

 erate dimension, such as that of a common fowl. The most effectual way of adopting this method of emptying 

 eggs is by using very many layers of thin paper and plenty of thick gum, but this is. of course, the most tedious. 

 Nevertheless, it is quite worth the trouble in the case of really rare specimens, and they will be none the worse for 

 operating upon from the delay of a few days caused by waiting for the gum to dry and harden. The naturalist 

 to whom this method first occurred has found it answer remarkably well in every case that it has been used, from 

 the egg of an eagle to that of a humming-bird, and among English oologlsts it has been generally adopted." 

 \A. Newton, in Smiths. Misc. Coll. 139, 1860.) 



