212 General Notes. [July 



flock of Avocets from the cars. They were amongst other Waders in a 

 slough adjoining the ocean. Again, whilst lying behind cover in the 

 valley awaiting Ducks, I noted a solitary individual, but could not get a 

 shot. The same day a companion with me killed two from a flock of 

 about twenty Ibises. A few days previous a market hunter in the town 

 brought me one, and later two individuals of the same bird. He told me 

 that with the exception of one killed in the same vicinity (Mission Valley) 

 last year, they were the first he had met with or heard of in several years' 

 hunting. The Avocet he had never seen, although I know of an authentic 

 capture of seven on the Bay shores a few years since. Both birds are of 

 sufficient rarity here to warrant notice of their unusual presence this year, 

 and the size of the flock of Ibises seen in the Santa Margarita is especially 

 unusual, as previous records have only been of, at most, six or seven indi- 

 viduals. — Godfrey Holterhoff, Jr., San Diego, Cal. 



The Eggs of the Knot {Tringa canutus) found at last! — No fact is 

 more generally recognized among ornithologists than the different de- 

 grees of distinction, so to speak, attaching to the discovery of the eggs 

 of different birds. The nests of some species have been found early, or 

 by accident; others before their absence from collections has excited 

 much notice; while others still have long been the object of special and 

 diligent search, and the failure to find them has been commented upon 

 by many distinguished writers. Of this latter category no more marked 

 example can be found than the Knot (Tringa canutus L.). Seebohm, 

 in his entertaining 'Siberia in Europe,' tells us that when he and Harvie- 

 Brown started for the Petchora, the birds "to the discovery of whose 

 eggs special interest seemed to attach, were the Grey Plover, the Little 

 Stint, the Sanderling, the Curlew Sandpiper, the Knot, and Bewick's 

 Swan."* And in a foot note he adds : "The Knot {Tringa canutus, Linn.) 

 was the only one of these six species of birds which we did not meet 

 with in the valley of the Petchora. It probably breeds on the shores of 

 the Polar basin in both hemispheres, but its eggs are absolutely un- 

 known." 



Major Henry W. Feilden, .naturalist to the Nares Arctic Expedition of 

 1S75-76, says : "I was not so fortunate as to obtain the eggs of the Knot 

 during our stay in the Polar regions, though it breeds in some numbers 

 along the shores of Smith Sound and the north coast of Grinnell Land. 

 .... During the month of July my companions and I often endeavored to 

 discover the nest of this bird ; but none of us were successful. How- 

 ever, on July 30, 1876, the day before we broke out of our winter-quarters, 

 where we had been frozen in eleven months, three of our seamen, walk- 

 ing by the border of a small lake, not far from the ship, came upon an 

 old bird accompanied by three nestlings, which they brought to me."t 

 These young I have seen in the British Museum at South Kensington, 



* Siberia in Europe. By Henry Seebohm, London, 1880, p. 2. 

 t Narrative of a voyage to the Polar Sea. By Capt. Sir G. S. Nares, London, Vol. 

 II, 1878, pp. 211-212. 



