Letters, Extracts, Notices, i^c. 325 



My appetite is somewhat large, inasmuch as I shall be 

 grateful for eggs of every description. In the case of hard- 

 set eggs/ where there is reason to fear that decomposition 

 would set in too rapidly for safe transit, the shell may be 

 broken and the contents plunged into methylated spirit, 

 naphtha, or chromic acid, say 1 per cent., when they will 

 keep indefinitely. 



Fresh eggs can be artificially hatched to the required stage 

 in the incubators here. 



I shall be equally grateful for nestlings, for the purpose 

 of studying the structure and distribution of the nestlings' 

 down. 



Knowing your great interest in this subject, I feel sure 

 that you will not only countenance, but aid me, by giving 

 this publicity in the pages of our Journal. 

 I am, yours &c., 



W. P. Pycraft, M.B.O.U, 



Departraeut of Comparative Anatomy, 



University Museum, Oxford, 



February 1st, 1894. 



The Structure and Variatio7is of the BiriVs-Egg. — A most 

 instructive addition lately made to the Bird Compartment of 

 the Educational Series in the Great Hall of the Natural 

 History Museum, South Kensington, will delight the eyes of 

 ornithologists. Sir William Flower's object in preparing it 

 is to exhibit in a small space the principal variations in 

 structure, shape, and colour of the bird's-egg. After a 

 careful diagrammatic drawing of a section of the bird's-egg, in 

 order to render manifest its structure when fresh and com- 

 plete, selected examples show the variations in number, form, 

 size, texture, and colour of the external shell. Other series 

 follow, exhibiting cases of similarity and dissimilarity of eggs 

 in the same species and in allied genera. This " exhibit " 

 might, and no doubt will, receive future additions to complete 

 it, but even in its initial state is one which no one interested 

 in oology should omit to visit. We propose in a future 

 number to give a fuller account of this collection, as it is 



SER. VI. VOL. VI. Z 



