STONE-CURLEW. 51 
departure, the keeper of the caravansary, who had 
assisted me in my search, and who had in previous 
years frequently taken the eggs, and cooked them as 
omelets along with those of the Pterocles setarius, found 
the nest and sent me the eggs, three in number. 
According to his account, the courser always adheres 
to this number, as indeed might have been expected 
from the character of the bird. It makes no nest what- 
ever, but deposits its eggs on the bare soil in the most 
arid plains.’ ” 
Since the above dates, however, several collectors in 
this country have received eggs from Algeria and 
Morocco. 
(2DICNEMUS CREPITANS, Temm. 
STONE-CURLEW. 
The Great Plover, Stone-Curlew or “ Culloo” as the 
name is locally pronounced, has also a special claim to 
its title of “ Norfolk” plover (independently of its former 
abundance in this county), inasmuch as this bird appears 
to have been first made known, in a graphic form,* to 
‘British ornithologists by Sir Thomas Browne, who 
about the year 1674 forwarded a drawing of it to the 
* The first mention of this bird as British is by Christopher 
Merrett in his “ Pinax Rerum Naturalium,” Londini: 1667, 8vo., 
pp. 224, wherein we find (p. 182) as follows :—* Arquata congener, 
a stone-curliew huic rostrum breve, accipitrinum [!], penne milvi, 
Phasiano par magnitudine, Dilicatissime avis ex agro Hantoniensi, 
Ds. Hutchinson, Ornithopola Londinensis.” Stone-curlew is, of 
course, by far the oldest English name for the European “ thicknee,” 
and as we have evidence of its use both in Hampshire and Norfolk 
for two hundred years, it is much to be regretted that it has not 
been generally adopted by all British ornithologists. 
H 2 
