122 Darwin and Romanes dealt with. 



I say. At p. 298, Animal Intelligence, Mr. Romanes 

 writes : 



" The goat-sucker, when its nest is disturbed, re- 

 moves its eggs to another place ; the male and female 

 both transporting eggs in their beaks." Now, from 

 this would it not appear that the goat-sucker is a 

 nest-builder and a layer of many eggs ? One of the 

 leading peculiarities about it is that it builds no nest, 

 therefore its nest cannot be disturbed. It never lays 

 more than two eggs, and often only one ; so that Mr. 

 Romanes' picture, set so close to the procedure of the 

 partridge, which may have as many as twenty eggs 

 to remove, is very out of joint, and misleading as to 

 the bird's ways ; and his words about male and female 

 transporting eggs in their beaks is a gross inaccuracy 

 and exaggeration, and something worse — worse surely 

 in regard to many cases, where the female bird lays 

 but one egg. But Mr. Romanes, quite unconsciously^ 

 as it would appear, corrects one of his own errors at 

 p. 292, when he writes that " the stone-curlew and 

 goat-sucker deposit their eggs on the bare soil," which, 

 as regards the goat-sucker, is not quite correct either, 

 for as often as not the egg or eggs is laid simply on 

 dried grass or fern at the foot of a tree ; and round 

 about Coldharbour, near Leith Hill, at Mosses' Wood, 

 and elsewhere, where night-jars abound, we have 

 more often found it so than on the bare soil ; but, 

 assuredly, it makes no nest.''- 



* And who corrected Mr. Romanes' proofs ? Surely he did 

 not do so himself, for scientific names of birds are awfully 

 blundered — instance, Melothrus canariensis instead of Molothrus 

 ionariensis, for one, and Molothrus haciius becomes Melothrus 

 cadius for another ! 



