Mr. R. Swinhoe's Ornithological Notes made at Chefoo. 131 



on the top of the rock, he went down and shot a Shag out of 

 a flock which he thought might possibly be the OT,\Tiers of the 

 eggs. The Shag was a Phalacrocorax pelagicus, Pall., and is 

 remarked on under its proper head. It, of course, had nothing 

 to do with the egg-trove. Of the five eggs brought to me 

 one only was fresh, the others all more or less bad. Three 

 are of the same ground-colour as the lower egg figured in 

 Hewitson's ' Eggs of British Birds,^ under Htematopus ostra- 

 legus (ii. p. 305) ; the other two are rather darker than the 

 upper figure ; and they are all spotted with dark brown and 

 grey : but the dark spots are more scattered and lighter in shade. 

 No streaks occur. In shape the eggs are more elongate than 

 the figures, measuring in length about 2'5 inches by 1*4 in 

 greatest breadth. It is pretty clear that one pair of Oyster- 

 catchers were the parents of the whole dozen or so of eggs 

 that Mr. Campbell found. What could have induced the 

 female to lay eggs and then desert them? Could she have 

 been constrained by the instinct that is said to impel the 

 Ostrich thus to provide maggots by the attracting putridity 

 of the abandoned eggs for the first food of her own favoured 

 hatchlings, which, when first l)orn, are too weak to travel far 

 in search of them ? 



I learn from Hewitson (/. c. ii. p. 306) that the European 

 Oystercatcher does make some kind of nest for its eggs, but 

 from Gould {' Birds of Australia,' ii. p. 216) that the Austra- 

 lian H. longirostris does not. The affinity of our intermediate 

 species in this respect, as in that of form and colour, is con- 

 sequently more for its Australian ally. 



82. Woodcock. Scolopax rusticola, L. 



On the 30th April we bought a live bird of this species in 

 the Chefoo market. 



83. Spring-Snipe. Gallinago tnegala, Swinh. 



I got a single specimen of this also at the same time and 

 place as the last. 



84. Pintail Snipe. Gallinago horsfiekli [iivaiy) . 



On the 4th May I bought from some Inrdcatchers in the 



k2 



