RINGED PLOVER. 69 



discovering their eggs, are too well known to need more than passing 

 mention. Although there is often a slight lining of grass or heather, 

 the eggs are usually laid in a mere hollow in the ground, it may be 

 in one of several scratched by the cock, or, perchance, in some large 

 animal's footprints ; and it is only in extremely rare instances that their 

 number is either one above or one below the normal four, in both cases 

 the symmetrical packing of the clutch being destroyed. Usually the 

 eggs, which are laid in April and May, are devoid of gloss ; they vary 

 in colour from pale olive to olive-buff, with blackish-brown and black 

 spots and blotches of variable size, and underlying markings of pale 

 purple. Although the lapwing owes its commercial importance entirely 

 to its eggs, which in early spring command a very high price in the 

 London market, where they are later on sold in enormous numbers, 

 the flesh of the bird itself is of good quality in winter, but by no 

 means equal to that of the plover. 



Three instances have been recorded of the occurrence in the 

 British Isles of the sociable lapwing {C/iethista [or Chcstusia] gregaria) 

 of eastern Europe and Central Asia. The first case, of which the 

 authenticity is doubtful, is stated to have occurred in Lancashire in 

 i860; the second took place in Ireland, where an immature bird was 

 taken in Meath in 1899; the third specimen was shot in Romney 

 Marsh, Kent, in 1907. This lapwing belongs to a small genus, the 

 members of which lack a crest, and have drab, in place of metallic 

 green, plumage. 



Rinffed Plover ^^^ genus typically represented by the ringed 



(iEgialitis 



plover is also taken in this work to include the 

 hiatieula). sand-plovers and dotterels, since, as has been well 



observed, although the two latter groups appear to 

 be distinguished by having a summer breeding-dress different from 

 the winter-plumage, there is so complete a transition, through the 

 Kentish plover, in which the change is slight, from species with a 

 double plumage of this description to others in which the dress is 

 similar at all seasons. The genus, in this sense, may be defined as 

 including small birds resembling the golden plover in the absence of 

 the hind-toe, but differing by the plumage being uniformly brown 

 above in place of spotted, and never wholly black below. A consider- 

 able number of species, with a collectively cosmopolitan distribution, 

 and miost of which wander far to the south in the winter, is included 

 in the genus in this extended sense. They are all shore-haunting 

 birds, as indeed is indicated by their scientific name. 



