1 82 EBB— EGGS 



EBB, said to be a local name of the Great Bunting. 



EBB-SLEEPER, a name given by shore -gunners to various 

 kinds of LiMicOLiE, though, except on the principle of luc%s a non 

 lucendo, the reason why cannot be explained, for these birds at ebb- 

 tide are especially active, while they take their rest as high water 

 approaches ; but so it is. 



EDOLIER, Levaillant's name for a South-African Shrike which 

 some writers have tried to Anglify. 



EEE-EVE, in modern spelling livji, the English rendering by 

 many voyagers of the native name of the beautiful scarlet Vestiaria 

 coccinea, whose feathers were largely used by the Sandwich-islanders 

 in the making of their magnificent mantles {cf. Drepanis). 



EGG-BIRD, the name given by many voyagers to the Sooty 

 Tern, Sterna fuliginosa, but perhaps occasionally used for other 

 species whose eggs afforded them supplies. 



EGGS. The pains bestowed by such Birds (incomparably the 

 most numerous of the Class), as build elaborate nests (see NiDiriCA- 

 tion), and the devices employed by those that, not doing so, display 

 no little skill in providing for the preservation of their produce, 

 invite some attention to the eggs which they lay. This attention 

 will perhaps be more cheerfully given when we think how many 

 naturalists, not merely ornithologists, have been first directed to 

 the study of the animal kingdom by the spoils they have won in 

 their early days of birds' -nesting. With some such men the 

 fascination of this boyish pursuit has maintained its full force even 

 in old age — a fact not so much to be wondered at when it is con- 

 sidered that hardly any branch of the practical study of Natural 

 History brings the enquirer so closely in contact with many of its 

 secrets. It is therefore eminently pardonable for the victims of 

 this devotion to dignify their passion by the learned name of 

 •' Oology," and to bespeak for it the claims of a science. Yet the 

 present writer — once an ardent follower of the practice of birds'- 

 nesting, and still on occasion warming to its pleasui-es — must 

 confess to a certain amount of disappointment as to the benefits 

 it Avas expected to confer on Systematic Ornithology, though he 

 yields to none in his high estimate of its utility in acquainting the 

 learner with the most interesting details of bird-life — without a 

 knowledge of which nearly all systematic study is but work that 

 may as well be done in a library, a museum, or a dissecting-room, 

 and is incapable of conveying information to the learner concerning 

 the why and the wherefore of such or such modifications and 

 adaptations of structure. To some — and especially to those who 

 are only anatomists — this statement may seem preposterous, but it 



