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THE


Avicultubal Magazine,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF

THE AVICULTURAL SOCIETY

FOR THE STUDY OF

FOREIGN & BRITISH BIRDS

IN FREEDOM & CAPTIVITY.



Third Series. —Yol. X.—No. 7.— All rights reserved. MAY, 1919.


THE HISTORY OF BIRDS’ NESTS.


By A. G. Butler, Ph.D.


Has any ornithologist ever heard of a fossil bird’s nest or even

egg? I never have,* but, oddly enough, some years ago when

gardening I picked a smallish heavy stone out of the earth, so

perfectly oval in form that it might well pass for a fossil egg, and J

kept it as a puzzling curiosity. Having, therefore, no positive

evidence of the existence of prehistoric nests, one is thrown back

upon imagination and probability. I regard a lively imagination as

an important acquisition ; it may open the way to deductive reasoning

and so help to explain long-hidden truth.


As man in his early days was content to live in caves and

burrows, there seems no reason for supposing that prehistoric birds

had acquired a superior condition of intelligence, and I can quite

imagine that Archceopteryx may have deposited its eggs in holes in

partly-decayed trees, that Ichthyomis, like our Razorbills, Guillemots

and Auks, made use of depressions or crevices in rocks, and that

Ilesperornis, a relative of the Divers and Grebes, not having attained

to the proficiency of the latter group as an architect, was content


I don’t suppose the eggs of JEpyornis would be considered even semi-fossilised.


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