Their Eggs and Nests, 3 



clear, and even entertaining or amusing, the every- 

 day incidents and facts which fall commonly enough 

 beneath the notice of the moderately sharp-eyed and 

 observant nest-hunter. 



The difficulty of making such a oook useful to the 

 systematic collector of eggs, however young, is not 

 nearly as great as that of making it interesting to the 

 many, who, though not inspired with the ambition of 

 owning a real grand cabinet, and of arranging its 

 manifold drawers with neatly ordered and ticketed 

 egg-cards, are yet sensible of a real pleasure and 

 enjoyment in noticing the nests and eggs of their 

 numerous "feathered friends," and in identifying 

 such as may chance to be less familiarly known than 

 the majority of those met with under ordinarj^ cir- 

 cumstances. Faithful description and accurate 

 representation are clearly within our reach, and such 

 description and representation are sufficient in nine- 

 teen cases out of twenty for the purposes of identi- 

 fication in all instances of usual occurrence. 



The cases in which identification is difficult are of 

 two or three kinds. Sometimes the difficulty arises 

 from the near resemblance of the eggs laid by differ- 

 ent allied species, sometimes from the wide dis- 

 crepancies in the markings and especially in the 

 shadings or tints of eggs laid by the same species ; 

 but much more frequently from the doubtful eggs 

 being met with apart from the containing nests, or 

 from want of proper or sufficiently accurate observa- 

 tion of the nests at the moment of discovery. The 

 young egg-fancier should always recollect that the 

 fashion and materials and site of the nest, taken in 



