404 Bibliographical Notices. 
Eggs of British Birds, with an Account of their Breeding-habits.— 
Limicole. With 54 Coloured Plates. By Frank Poynrrne. 
(Rk. H. Porter.) 
Mr. Poynting is to be congratulated on 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 Limicole in Hewitson’s 1846 edition of 
the ‘ Eggs of British Birds,’ undoubtedly the best in that respect, 
though the third edition (1856) 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 opportunity 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. ‘he 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 tundras 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. Feilden may have been successful 
on their 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’-nesters. For these the work is a compendium ; it is, 
in fact, a history of the British Limicole 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 
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