COLOUR OF EGGS. 21 



blotched, clouded, striped, and zoned, in many species ; 

 in fact, it is a matter of great difficulty to match speci- 

 mens out of two different nests, except they are prin- 

 cipally white, and then their relative size or shape often 

 destroys the appearance of uniformity. 



If form, size, and colour are thus so little to be 

 depended upon, there is now only the "texture" on 

 which any reliance can be placed, and this, in the case 

 of imperfectly shelled specimens, is rough, dull, and 

 wanting in colour, when in a perfect egg it would be 

 smooth, polished, and bright coloured. This may bo 

 easily seen on comparing several specimens. Eggs of 

 birds of the hawk tribe are strong-shelled, generally 

 rounded, whitish, or blotched with dirty red, having a 

 more or less calcareous surface. Owls 5 eggs are rather 

 strong, mostly rounded, white, having a chalky appear- 

 ance, although the surface has not the outer layer as 

 in those of hawks. Those of the crow tribe have the 

 shell thinner, more elongate, colours green or blue 

 clouded with brown and gray, surface somewhat 

 polished, but irregularly smafaintli/ ivrinJcled all over. 

 Those of the roller, kingfisher, and woodpecker tribe, 

 thin, round, or pointed, white, finely polished, smooth 

 and transparent when recent. Eggs of the insect- 

 eaters, as butcher-birds, thrush tribe, warblers, &-c., 

 are so thin that the yolk may generally be seen through 

 the shell of any fresh specimen ; they are mostly ele- 

 gant in form, colours varied, of reddish, yellowish, 

 grey, brown, and blue in the shrikes and flycatchers 

 reddish, green, white, brown, blue, and yellowish in 

 the warblers, their surface slightly polished. In those 

 of the seed-eaters, as the larks, buntings, finches, and 

 sparrows, the shell is slightly stouter, more robust in 

 form, colours brown, grey, bluish, or greenish-white, 

 spotted with dull red, purple, or black ; more opaque 

 (excepting the linnet tribe), and rather more polished. 



