506 LAPWING 
when deepened and its margin heightened by the accumulation of 
vegetable matter, as is usually the case while incubation continues, 
and the black-spotted olive eggs (four in number) are almost in- 
visible to the careless or untrained eye unless it should happen to 
glance directly upon them. ‘The young when first hatched are 
clothed with mottled down so as closely to resemble a stone and to 
be thus overlooked as they squat motionless on, the approach of 
danger. At a distance the plumage of the adult appears to be 
white and black in about equal proportions, the latter predominat- 
ing above ; but on closer examination nearly all the seeming black 
is found to be 4 bottle-green gleaming with purple and copper ; and 
the tail-coverts, both above and below, are seen to be of a bright 
bay colour that is seldom visible in flight. The crest consists of 
six or eight narrow and elongated feathers, turned slightly upwards 
at the end, and is usually carried in «a horizontal position, extending 
in the cock beyond the middle of the back; but it is capable of 
being erected so as to become nearly vertical. Frequenting (as has 
been said) parts of the open country so very divergent in character, 
and as remarkable for the peculiarity of its flight as for that of its 
cry, the Lapwing is far more often observed in nearly all parts of 
the British Islands than any other of the Lim1coL&. The peculiarity 
of its flight seems due to the wide and rounded wings it possesses, 
the steady and ordinarily somewhat slow flapping of which impels 
the body at each stroke with a manifest though easy jerk. Yet on 
occasion, as when performing its migrations, or even its almost 
daily transits from one feeding-ground to another, and still more 
when being pursued by a Falcon, the speed with which it moves 
through the air is very considerable ; and the passage of a flock of 
Lapwings, twinkling aloft or in the distance, as the dark and light 
surfaces of the plumage are alternately presented, is always an 
agreeable spectacle to those who love a landscape enlivened by its 
wild creatures. On the ground this bird runs nimbly, and is nearly 
always engaged in searching for its food, which is wholly animal. 
Allied to the Lapwing are several forms that have been placed 
by ornithologists in the genera Hoplopterus, Chettusia, Lobivanellus, 
Sarciophorus, and so forth ; but the respective degree of affinity they 
bear to one another is not rightly understood, and space would 
prohibit any attempt at here 
expressing it. In. some of 
them the hind toe, which 
has already ceased to have 
any function in the Lap- 
BILL AND CARPAL SPUR mL) HOoPLoprervs. wing, is wholly wanting. In 
(After Swainson.) i : 
others the wings are armed 
with a tubercle or even a sharp spur on the carpus. Few have 
any occipital crest, but several have the face ornamented by the 
