Vo i- XI ] Notes and News. 339 



Indeed, that cretaceous formation, it would seem to me, would afford the 

 very best conditions for the preservation of such objects. 



Captain Bendire has shown me a very beautiful specimen of a fossil 

 e°-g of a turtle (Emys) that he personally collected. It is from the 

 Cretaceous, and the fossilized remains of the turtle were found with it. He 

 also showed me a fine fossil bird's egg, probably a Sula, found 42 ft. 

 below the surface of a guano deposit on the Island of Lobos de Tierria, 

 coast of Peru, and which has been estimated by the Peruvian scientists to 

 be a thousand years old. 



I reiterate my belief here that it is very likely that the eggs of all 

 the early ancestral types of birds were plain white and without 

 markings of any kind. When I say this I do not mean to include of 

 course the more immediate ancestral types of modern birds, though 

 it is probable that many of them laid pure white eggs, but rather 

 those avian or reptilo-avian forms belonging to still earlier geologic 

 periods, as for example such a horizon as the one in which Hesperortiis 

 and its contemporaries are found, or perhaps even still a little later, as 

 those of the early part of the Tertiary age. 



Very respectfully, 



R. W. Shufeldt. 

 Takoma, D. C. , 

 25 J u h'i lS 94- 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The Twelfth Congress of the American Ornithologists' Union will be 

 held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, 

 beginning Monday, Nov. 12, 1894, with the meeting of the Council and 

 the business meeting for the election of officers and members and the 

 transaction of the usual routine business. Tuesday and following days 

 will be given to public sessions for the reading and discussion of scientific 

 papers. Members intending to present papers are requested to forward 

 the titles of their papers to the Secretary, Mr. John H. Sage, Portland, 

 Conn., prior to Nov. 7, in order to facilitate the preparation of the pro- 

 gram of papers to be read before the Congress. 



Mr. Samuel N. Rhoads of Haddonfield, New Jersey, has just 

 published his 'Reprint of the North American Zoology, by George 

 Ord,' announced some months since (see Auk, XI, p. 190) as in prepa- 

 ration. It forms an octavo volume of nearly 200 pages, relating about 

 equally to mammals and birds. The work comes too late for formal 

 review in the present number of 'The Auk.' 



