64 
In Mr. Bidwell’s collection there is az egg which, 
differing from a large series of Snipe’s eggs, is exactly 
like the drawing which I made from the Edinburgh egg. 
I have ¢hree eggs which were purchased at the sale 
of Wheelwright’s eggs; two of which are almost identical 
with Mr. Bidwell’s egg ; they are the eggs described in 
a letter, written to the Dazly Telegraph, in 1875, in op- 
position to the idea that the Knot’s eggs were unknown, 
which letter quotes a marginal note in Wheelwright’s 
copy of Morris’s Birds Eggs, upon his illustration of a 
presumed Knot’s Egg, “ Wot im the least like the eggs of 
the Knot that I have had from Greenland and Spitzbergen, 
nor does this figure at all resemble thatin Blaseus, which 
much resembles my eggs, tn colouring they are not unlike 
the Snipe’s.” In his ‘Sweden’ he states that his A7o?’s 
eggs were from Greenland. 
These eggs are shorter than the Snipes; and of a 
dun olive; the ground and markings not being so distinct 
as the eggs of the Snipe. An average egg is 1.27 by 1.12 
inches: Davie gives the measurement 1.32 by .98. 
Mr. Murdoch, of the Smithsonian Institute, Wash- 
ington, writes to me in 1885 : 
“T have found full sized yelks in the birds at Point 
Barrow, Alaska.’ And later writes : 
“Lieutenant Greely shot a female with an egg ready 
for extrusion, butit was lost in the disastrous retreat from 
Franklin Bay.” J have seen Greely’s description of the 
egg, but, if taken from the bird after death, it might have 
been a curiosity ; but nothing to determine the true ap- 
pearance of the egg. 
Dr. Saxby says that Thomas Edmonstone, in his 
MS. Notes to his ‘Catalogue of Birds of Shetland,’ states 
that he has little doubt that the Knot breeds in the North- 
ern districts; he has seen, and shot them at the beginning 
