182 EBB—EGGS 
EBB, said to be.a local name of the Great BUNTING. 
EBB-SLEEPER, a name given by shore-gunners to various 
kinds of LimicoLa, though, except on the principle of ducus a non 
lucendo, the reason why cannot be explained, for these birds at ebb- 
tide are especially active, while they take their rest as high water 
approaches ; but so it is. 
EDOLIER, Levaillant’s name for a South-African SHRIKE which 
some writers have tried to Anglify. 
EEE-EVE, in modern spelling Jiwi, the English rendering by 
many voyagers of the native name of the beautiful scarlet Vestiaria 
coccinea, whose feathers were largely used by the Sandwich-islanders 
in the making of their magnificent mantles (cf. DREPANIS). 
EGG-BIRD, the name given by many voyagers to the Sooty 
TERN, Sterna fuliginosa, but perhaps occasionally used for other 
species whose eggs afforded them swpplies. 
EGGS. The pains bestowed by such Birds (incomparably the 
most numerous of the Class), as build elaborate nests (see NIDIFICA- 
TION), and the devices employed by those that, not doing so, display 
no little skill in providing for the preservation of their produce, 
invite some attention to the eggs which they lay. This attention 
will perhaps be more cheerfully given when we think how many 
naturalists, not merely ornithologists, have been first directed to 
the study of the animal kingdom by the spoils they have won in 
their early days of birds’-nesting. With some such men the 
fascination of this boyish pursuit has maintained its full force even 
in old age—a fact not so much to be wondered at when it is con- 
sidered that hardly any branch of the practical study of Natural 
History brings the enquirer so closely in contact with many of its 
secrets. It is therefore eminently pardonable for the victims of 
this devotion to dignify their passion by the learned name of 
“Oology,” and to bespeak for it the claims of a science. Yet the 
present writer—once an ardent follower of the practice of birds’- 
nesting, and still on occasion warming to its pleasures—must 
confess to a certain amount of disappointment as to the benefits 
it was expected to confer on Systematic Ornithology, though he 
yields to none in his high estimate of its utility in acquainting the 
learner with the most interesting details of bird-life—without a 
knowledge of which nearly all systematic study is but work that 
may as well be done in a library, a museum, or a dissecting-room, 
and is incapable of conveying information to the learner concerning 
the why and the wherefore of such or such modifications and 
adaptations of structure. ‘To some—and especially to those who 
are only anatomists—this statement may seem preposterous, but it 
