404 Bihl'iofjrapliical Notices, 



Eggs of British Birds, with an Account of their Breeding-hahits. — 

 Limicolas. With 54 Coloured Plates. Ey Fraxk PorxriNO. 

 (R. H. Porter.) 



Mr. Potnting is to be congratulated oa the production of a work 

 in which the illustrations are equal to those of Hewitson. We can 

 hardly go further in the way of praise, for we have compared these 

 plates with those of the Limicolae in Hewitson's 1846 edition of 

 the ' Eggs of British Birds,' undoubtedly the best in that respect, 

 though the third edition (185(5) contained additional figures of the 

 eggs of about half a dozen Waders, mainly due to discoveries in 

 Lapland by the late John Wolley. In the forty years which have 

 elapsed increased facilities for travel and other circumstances have 

 vastly increased our acquaintance with the nesting-haunts of many 

 species, and where only a few specimens of eggs were available 

 large series are now to be had. The opportuuity has not been 

 neglected, as shown by the figures of 6 eggs of the Cream-coloured 

 Courser, 10 of the Grey Plover, 14 of the Little Stint, and 6 of the 

 Bar-tailed Godwit ; not to mention eggs more easily obtainable. 

 Even the eggs of most of the wanderers from America are given, 

 while, of the species which habitually visit our shores, only the Knot 

 and the Curlew-Sandpiper remain without plates. The former of 

 these species breeds in Arctic America, and the nestlings were 

 obtained by the naturalists of the ' Alert ' and the ' Discovery ' on 

 Grinnell Land in 1876, while General Greely, of the United States 

 expedition, subsequently took from a female bird an egg apparently 

 ready, or nearly ready, for extrusion ; but this it would be premature 

 to consider typical. The breeding-places of the Curlew-Sandpiper 

 are probably on the extensive tun Iras of Arctic Siberia ; and the 

 natural difficulties in the way of reaching these are almost insu- 

 perable, except, perhaps, for an expedition subsidized by the 

 Russian Government. Even while we write it is possible that 

 Mr. H. J. Pearson and Col. H. W. Feildeu may have been successful 

 on tlitir trip to Habarova this summer, though we hardly venture 

 to anticipate such a result. The late Dr. von Middendorff obtained 

 a female with a partially shelled egg in her oviduct on the Taimyr, 

 in 74° N. lat., and that is the best up to the present. 



A very strong feature of this admirable work is its text, which 

 is largely compiled — with full acknowledgment — from authorities 

 who have written from personal acquaintance with the various 

 species or who have worked out their distribution. It is therefore, 

 as the author says, " to a large extent a record of birds'-nesting 

 adventures," and as such it cannot fail to be of interest to that very 

 large class of ornithologists who, whatever be their age, are or have 

 been birds'-ncsters. For these the work is a compendium ; it is, 

 in fact, a history of the British Limicolas at the most interesting 

 period of their lives, without the descriptions of their plumage or 

 of their behaviour during the cold season. The bibliography is well 



