CORVUS CORAX. 525 



sliewn by certain Gulls' eggs laid every year on some of the islands off the 

 northern coasts of Norway, with which I became acquainted in 1855. ^ 



Mr. Smith was unable to say what these eggs were when he sent them, and 

 in replj' to my enquiries wrote that he could only be sure that they were taken 

 " on the sea banks" (j. e. cliffs) of Unst.] 



[§ 2797. Five.—'Rathlm, Ireland, 20 March, 1863. From Mr. 

 Robert Harvey. 



Mr. Harvey's note is : — ** The nest was on the face of Slieve-a-cheim, which 

 is the highest cliff" on the north side of the island, about 445 feet above the level 

 of the sea, and nearly perpendicular. The Eavens breed in it every year."] 



* [I had previously seen eggs publicly sold in London as Eagles' which at the time 

 I felt sure were not so, though I was unable to form an opinion as to what they 

 were ; but immediately I saw the pink or red eggs of Gulls from Homo, Reeno, 

 and other Norwegian localities I recognized their origin. In Dr. Hennicke's edition 

 of Naumann's * Naturgeschichte der Vogel Mitteleuropas ' a Rook's egg of the same 

 lively coloration is figured (Taf. 47. fig. 26), which Herr S. J. Thienemann, the writer 

 of the accompanjdng letterpress (iv. p. 114), informs us was one of two obtained in 

 1896 by the Forstrat J. von Wangehn from a rookery near Merseburg, where it is 

 the practice yearly to destroy all Rooks' nests and eggs (Ornithologische Monat- 

 echrift, xxiii. pp. 264, 265). Baron von Koenig-Warthausen has been still more 

 fortunate, as he possesses eleven specimens of this ruddy variety obtained from 

 three Rooks' nests near his own residence in 1891, 1893 and 1894 (Jahreshefte des 

 Vereius fiir Vaterl. Naturk. in Wiirttemberg, 48ster Jahrg. p. Ixiv ; and Zeitschr. 

 fiir Oologie, V. Jahrg. No. 2, p. 6).— Ed.] 



