186 The Zoologist— April, 1866. 



speaking the duck shuffled off from under the feet of one of our party, 

 who had unwittingly approached the nest in the herbage at the foot of 

 the wall, and the egg was left exposed ; on our return, half au hour 

 afterwards, we found the sucked egg-shell in the grass, and the nest 

 was empty. 



The herring gull is scarcely in the proportion of one to two hundred 

 of the lesser blackbacked gull, and as every nest of the former is known 

 to the keeper, there is no danger of getting mixed eggs: moreover, the 

 eggs of the herring gull, which I was shown, were all larger than the 

 largest of the other species : quite the reverse of my personal expe- 

 rience at Lundy Island, where the eggs of the lesser blackbacked gulls 

 are generally larger and more boldly marked than those of the herring 

 gull. My observations, based upon a large and most carefully identi- 

 fied series of the eggs of both species taken by myself at Lundy, 

 had convinced me that it was impossible to distinguish between 

 them with any degree of certainty ; still, as a rule, the eggs of the 

 herring gull were of a somewhat more elongated shape. I merely 

 mention this as an instance of the variation of types in different 

 localities, and to show the danger of generalizing from a series of 

 eggs from any one spot. 



Scrambling over the rocks, I almost stepped upon a female eider 

 duck, which instantly left her nest, disclosing, to my surprise, one egg 

 of her own and two of the lesser blackbacked gull, on which she had 

 been sitting. It is impossible to say how the young gulls would have 

 thriven under the care of their foster-mother, for as it was most 

 probable that the uncovered eggs would soon be sucked by those 

 thieves, the herring gulls, I just took them under my own protection, 

 they being handsome specimens. 



On the highest part of the island, at a spot called the "Pinnacles," 

 from the sha))e of the rocks, wore numbers of guillemots and one razor- 

 bill, which had an egg in an old cormorant's nest. This was on a tall 

 jagged rock, surrounded by water, which has never, I believe, been 

 scaled by any amateur " egger," except Mr. Hevvitson, in years gone 

 by. On the ledges of the rocks and chasms were a good many of the 

 so-called ringed guillemot, some with merely a rudimentary line, and 

 others with the white streak quite distinctly marked. One of the 

 latter was sitting on its egg, on the opposite side of a chasm only a 

 few feet wide, and I examined it very carefully, after which I took the 

 egg, with the " egg-stick," a pole with a net at the end, nearly 

 succeeding in capturing the bird also. The egg in question was cream- 



