INTRODUCTION. 
ON THE PROTECTIVE COLOUR OF EGGS. 
[THis chapter has been written for me by Mr. Cuaruxs. Drxon, and is sufficiently 
elaborated to post my readers up in the questions which have arisen on this subject since 
it has been regarded from the evolutionist point of view. It is, of course, partly based 
upon Darwin (‘ Descent of Man,’ ii. p. 166) and Wallace (‘ Natural Selection,’ pp. 211,231), 
who have endeavoured to explain, by the laws of Natural Selection, the facts (long 
ago remarked by Gloger* and others) respecting the colour of eggs. 
The results of the investigation are not quite so satisfactory as might have been 
expected. There are so many cases which cannot be explained by protective selection, 
that the student, not being able in this instance to fall back upon sexual selection, is 
obliged to assume that many effects are the results of extinct causes. To my mind they are 
suggestive rather of other powerful factors in addition to protective and sexual selection.— 
ES: ] 
Ootoey has until lately been a much neglected science. Looked upon as 
an occupation which has for its object the mere collecting, labelling, and 
arranging in a cabinet the eggs of birds, or threading them on strings like 
beads, or, worse still, sticking them on cards in all kinds of fantastic 
patterns, egg-collecting has long been regarded as a schoolboy’s hobby, 
and quite beneath the dignity of the man of science. But since the 
great discoveries of those illustrious naturalists Charles Darwin and 
Alfred Russel Wallace have placed the study of natural history on a 
different basis, and completely revolutionized scientific research, oology 
may be said to have slowly risen from a schoolboy’s pastime or a collector’s 
craze to a science so fascinating and so instructive as to claim the careful 
attention of many of our ablest naturalists. Such hitherto despised objects 
as birds’ eggs have a tale to tell quite as interesting as that of any other 
object in the organic world; they have a history to reveal which assists 
in pointing out the line of march which organic life has taken from its 
earliest dawn to its present endiess and varied ramifications. But a study 
of eggs cannot be made satisfactorily without including the birds; the 
two subjects are inseparably linked together, and it is necessary to have 
the bird and its life-history before us when studying the egg with its 
* In the ‘ Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geographical Science’ (i. p. 303), published 
in 1880, a short résumé of Gloger’s paper of the previous year is given, translated from the 
‘Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde in Berlin.’ 
VOL. II. ; b 
