38 



from the shape of the bird one might expect it to lay an egg 

 shaped like the Woodcock's egg. I admit shape goes for very 

 little, as I have Dunlins, Common Sandpipers, Curlews, and c\ en 

 Snipes' eggs, all of which are generally very typically pyriform, 

 as broad and round as Woodcocks, but I think I never saw a 

 pyriform Woodcock's egg. In the days when this collection 

 was made, and previously, collections of such like things were 

 more often to be found in countiy houses than they are at the 

 present time, but the opportunities of getting from home were 

 not then so numerous and consequently public collections were 

 not so easily seen, and those who had any taste for such things 

 collected for themselves, and I think generally, in consequence, 

 the collectors acquired more information than the generality of 

 those you now meet with care to possess. 



I would remark that it is possible the Golden Plover and Ring 

 Dotterel and the Dunlin mentioned* may not be those of Europe ; 

 it is very difficult to say whether the American forms of these 

 birds are the same species as the European. CHARLES MURRAY 

 AD AM SON. 



THE KNOT. 



HAVING copies of Captain Sabine's memoir of the Birds of Green- 

 land, and also of Richardson's Fauna Boreali Americana, I find 

 in the former this bird is mentioned as having been killed on 

 Hare Island in June ; and in the latter it is stated it breeds 

 on Melville Peninsula, and in other parts of Arctic America, 

 and also in Hudson's Bay, down to the 55th parallel, and that 

 it lays four eggs on a tuft of withered grass, which are, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Hutchins, of a dun colour, fully marked with red- 

 dish spots. 



Faber mentions the Knot as found by him here and there in 

 Iceland, particularly on the southern sides of thai Island. Its 

 arrival is late, about tin: last days of May. and it has then a 

 Slimed the blood-red under plumage oi the summer. At that 

 time it is to be seen on the shores in company with the Turn- 



