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Dr. A. G. Butler,



woven, the oven-birds, woodpeckers, wrynecks, kingfishers, motmots,

bee-eaters, toucans, barbets and parrots.


Starlings which build in holes or crevices lay more or less

blue eggs, though I have found white eggs of our English starling;

but it should be noted that even when bright blue they are destitute

of markings : on the other hand the titmice which build in more or

less secluded places, lay white eggs more or less spotted with red or

reddish, yet varying greatly in the size and intensity of their mark¬

ings in relation I believe to the amount of light which falls upon the

sitting bird. The touracous which build a platform-like nest are

said to lay bluish-white eggs,and the doves, as a general rule, con¬

struct somewhat similar nests and lay more or less white eggs, but

this lack of colouring may be inherited from progenitors who built

in semi-obscurity, as the rock-pigeon still does ; moreover it would

seem from the more or less buff colouring of the eggs of some of the

African bronze-wings that there is a tendency already in these birds

to acquire a definite pigmentation in their ova.


I have noted elsewhere that the eggs of the green singing-

finch which are described by Stark and Sclater as pale bluish,

sparingly spotted towards the larger end with pale reddish-brown,

when laid in my indoor aviaries, where they were exposed to little

if any sunlight, were creamy-white, more often than not without

markings and at best with only a few huffish spots at the large end.

On the other hand eggs of the Chingolo song-sparrow laid in Mr.

Teschemaker’s aviary had a white or cream-coloured ground-tint, but

the hen of the young birds which he sent me laid eggs in a light aviary

to which only the early morning sun penetrated with the normal

pale blue-greenish ground-tint and with well-defined sienna markings.


And now I will advert to some of the more interesting cases

which impressed me while collecting British birds’ eggs : at first I

secured the eggs alone : but subsequently, for purposes of accurate

description in my Handbook, I found it necessary to make a collection

also of the nests with notes of the sites in which I found them.


The eggs of the various species of British thrush vary enor¬

mously and appear to be affected by the position of the nest, the


* Those laid by my white-crested touracos were white.—E d.



