IDENTIFYING EGGS 209 



they have no right to expect that others will be at the 

 trouble of making an examination which seldom leads 

 to a satisfactory result, and is therefore generally but a 

 waste of time. In ordinary circumstances it surely may 

 be looked for that a man when he has found a suspicious 

 nest should lay himself out to see the owner, and if he 

 cannot do that satisfactorily he should refrain from 

 taking the eggs. It is notorious that this is absolutely 

 necessary in the case of Ducks' nests, and the subsequent 

 examination of the down is a very poor substitute for 

 the evidence that the finders may in most cases with a 

 moderate amount of prudence obtain on the spot. The 

 cases when this cannot possibly be done are compara- 

 tively rare.* 



In 1906 two young ornithologists found the Scaup 

 Duck breeding in the Hebrides and presented Newton 

 with eggs for the Cambridge Museum He wished to 

 include a record of the find in the " Ootheca Wolleyana," 

 but in spite of the most careful observations of the bird 

 made by the finders of the nest, he was unwilling to admit 

 the authenticity of the eggs without a further identifica- 

 tion of the down : 



Hurrah ! Victoria ! ! Hallelujah ! ! ! Banzai ! ! ! ! 

 Hooroosh ! ! ! ! ! I must express my exultation in 

 many languages. 



Yesterday I placed in Gadow's hands six glass-topped 

 boxes containing down of (1) Eider-Duck ; (2 and 3), 

 Black and Velvet Scoter ; (4) Dun-Bird ; (5) Tufted 

 Duck, and (6) Kinnear's Hebrides nest of 11/6/06. 

 To-day Gadow brought me a lock or " spray " of each 

 between two slips of glass, and I waited with all the 

 patience I could muster for the verdict. The Hebrides' 

 down would not match any of the foregoing. Then, for 

 the first time, I produced your little packet of Scaup's 

 down from Sutherland and he put a lock of it between 



* Letter to J. A. Harvie-Brown, December 2, 1880. 



