STONE-CURLEW. 51 



departure, the keeper of the caravansary, who had 

 assisted me in my search, and who had in previous 

 years frequently taken the eggs, and cooked them as 

 omelets along with those of the Pterocles setarius, found 

 the nest and sent me the eggs, three in number. 

 According to his account, the courser always adheres 

 to this number, as indeed might have been expected 

 from the character of the bird. It makes no nest what- 

 ever, but deposits its eggs on the bare soil in the most 

 arid plains.' y ' 



Since the above dates, however, several collectors in 

 this country have received eggs from Algeria and 

 Morocco. 



(EDICNEMUS CEEPITANS, Temm. 



STOKE-CUELEW. 



The Great Plover, Stone-Curlew or " Culloo" as the 

 name is locally pronounced, has also a special claim to 

 its title of " Norfolk" plover (independently of its former 

 abundance in this county), inasmuch as this bird appears 

 to have been first made known, in a graphic form,* to 

 British ornithologists by Sir Thomas Browne, who 

 about the year 1674 forwarded a drawing of it to the 



* The first mention of this bird as British is by Christopher 

 Merrett in his " Pinax Rerum Naturalium," Londini : 1667, 8vo., 

 pp. 224, wherein we find (p. 182) as follows : " Arquata congener, 

 a stone-curliew huic rostrum breve, accipitrinum [!], pennae milvi, 

 Phasiano par magnitudine, Dilicatissimae avis ex agro Hantoniensi, 

 Ds. Hutchinson, Ornithopola Londinensis." Stone-curlew is, of 

 course, by far the oldest English name for the European " thicknee," 

 and as we have evidence of its use both in Hampshire and Norfolk 

 for two hundred years, it is much to be regretted that it has not 

 been generally adopted by all British ornithologists. 



H 2 



