4 Dr. A. Brandt on a large Fossil Egg 



II. — On a large Fossil Egg from the neighbourhood of Cherson. 

 By Dr. Alexander Brandt*. 



A SHORT time since^ Herr E. Dobrowolsky offered to sell to me 

 for the zoological museum of the Academy an apparently very 

 remarkable egg. As regards its purchase the Direction of the 

 museum could do nothing, since the sum asked (1000 roubles) 

 was by no means suitable to the very moderate means of the 

 museum. Herr Dobrowolsky was nevertheless so good as 

 not only to assist me in describing the egg by permitting me 

 to make an accurate examination of it and by giving me the 

 necessary particulars as to its discovery, but also to allow 

 me to have a plaster cast prepared of it. 



The egg is stated to have been found, at least fifteen 

 years ago, at Malinowka, in the province and district of 

 Cherson, in an ancient watercourse or so-called " balka." In 

 a small stream traversing the old watercourse below a wear, 

 the spring floods falling over the latter washed out a channel, 

 from the bottom of which the egg appeared. Being observed 

 by some peasants it was taken up and given to Hr. N. S. T. Ma- 

 linowsky, an uncle of our informant. The soil from which the 

 egg came was described as a reddish-brown frangible loam, 

 beneath which lay crystalline gypsum. The egg is at pre- 

 sent in the possession of Hr. Ssemen Dobrowolsky, the 

 father of my informant, a landed proprietor in the province 

 of Cherson. 



I now add a short description of this apparently remark- 

 able egg. 



The form of the egg is so nearly that of a regular ellipse, 

 that it is diflfcult to tell the big end from the little. Yet we 

 may assume the end recognizable by its somewhat less smooth 

 shell to be the big end — a conclusion supported by the well- 

 known ornithologist Herr W. Meves, in whose company I 

 had the pleasure of examining the egg, inasmuch as he has 

 frequently noticed that in birds^ eggs generally the big end 



♦ Read before the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg on 

 the 6th of September 1872, and translated from the ' Bulletin,' vol. xa iii. 

 no. 2, p. 158, et «e?.— P.L.S. 



