5o6 LAPWING 



when deepened and its margin heightened by the accumulation of 

 vegetable matter, as is usually the case while incubation continues, 

 and the black-spotted olive eggs (four in number) are almost in- 

 visible to the careless or untrained eye unless it should happen to 

 glance directly upon them. The young when first hatched are 

 clothed Avith mottled down so as closely to resemble a stone and to 

 be thus overlooked as they squat motionless on the approach of 

 danger. At a distance the plumage of the adult appears to be 

 white and black in about equal pi'oportions, the latter predominat- 

 ing above ; but on closer examination nearly all the seeming black 

 is found to be a bottle-green gleaming with purple and copper ; and 

 the tail-coverts, both above and below, are seen to be of a bright 

 bay colour that is seldom visible in flight. The crest consists of 

 six or eight narrow and elongated feathers, turned slightly upwards 

 at the end, and is usually carried in a horizontal position, extending 

 in the cock beyond the middle of the back ; but it is capable of 

 being erected so as to become neai^ly vertical. Frequenting (as has 

 been said) parts of the open country so very divergent in character, 

 and as remarkable for the peculiarity of its flight as for that of its 

 cry, the Lapwing is far more often observed in nearly all parts of 

 the British Islands than any other of the Limicol^e. The peculiarity 

 of its flight seems due to the wide and rounded wings it possesses, 

 the steady and ordinarily somewhat slow flapping of which impels 

 the body at each stroke with a manifest though easy jerk. Yet on 

 occasion, as when performing its migrations, or even its almost 

 daily transits from one feeding-ground to another, and still more 

 when being pursued liy a Falcon, the speed with which it moves 

 through the air is very considerable ; and the passage of a flock of 

 LapAvings, twinkling aloft or in the distance, as the dark and light 

 surfaces of the plumage are alternately presented, is always an 

 agreeable spectacle to those who love a landscape enlivened by its 

 wild creatures. On the ground this bird runs nimbly, and is nearly 

 always engaged in searching for its food, which is wholly animal. 



Allied to the Lapwing are several forms that have been placed 

 by ornithologists in the genera Ho-plopterus, Chettmia, LoUvanellns, 

 SaTcioj)horus, and so forth ; but the respective degree of affinity they 

 bear to one another is not rightly understood, and space would 



prohibit any attempt at here 

 expressing it. Li some of 

 them the hind toe, which 

 has already ceased to have 

 any function in the Lap- 



BiLL AND Carpal Spur of Hoploptrrus. Mnim, is wholly Wanting;. In 



(After Swainson.) ,^ ,^ ■ -, 



others the wings are armed 

 with a tubercle or even a sharp spur on the carpus. Few have 

 any occipital crest, but several have the face ornamented by the 



