4280 THE ZooLocist—JAnNvuARY, 1875. 
properly attested; but if they did not change unfortunately nothing would 
be proved.’ The series of eggs which I had collected from under the ringed 
birds I considered-a great point gained, for though most of the birds were 
sitting side by side with the common ones I was then unaware that 
each does not invariably return to its own egg, though it is very seldom 
that the mistake is committed. Since that time I have always collected 
them from those little visited, because comparatively unproductive, spots, 
where two or three ringed birds built, not always alone, but occasionally 
with a scattered few common ones close by. I procured the first egg year 
after year, always leaving those of the second laying, and can assert posi- 
tively that each description of bird returns to the same spot annually. The 
eggs are for the most part undistinguishable from those of the common 
suillemot, and I have specimens fully coloured, taken from recently-killed 
females; but with the exception of having discarded my former belief, that 
the egg was peculiar in size and shape, I cannot but adhere to my old 
opinion (Zool. 1864, p. 9242), ‘ that generally in the eggs of U. lachrymans 
the blotches are larger, the ground-colour is clearer, there are fewer under 
tints, and the markings are better defined and less prone to take the form of 
streaks.’ It may be scarcely necessary to remark that both birds occasionally 
lay white eggs. Mr. Harting mentions (‘ Handbook of British Birds,’ p. 74) 
that in the Hebrides Mr. Harvie Brown has seen a ringed guillemot 
feeding a young bird which was under the wing of a common guillemot. 
This again but throws an equal weight into either side of the scale, for it 
may be asked, ‘Is it certain that the parent which cannot recognise its own 
egg is incapable of making a similar error as regards its own young?’ 
The proportion of the number of ringed to common birds in Shetland has 
not yet been correctly ascertained. Very few of the summer battues have 
been attended by me, and it is impossible to obtain correct information 
from a number of excited shooters on their return. The fowlers consider 
the ‘longie with the white eye’ to be less abundant than the common 
species, and with regard to the eggs they say they are ‘ bonnier,’ meaning 
that they are more distinctly marked and the blotches are larger. All this 
precisely agrees with my own experience.”—P. 294. 
This interesting enquiry might be well left here, for it will 
certainly long wait solution: those who know most hesitate most 
to express any very decided views; those who know less, the skin- 
and-bone ornithologists of John Macgillivray, are more confident 
and more dogmatic—I suppose on the old acknowledged principle 
that 
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” 
The accomplished editor of the ‘ Birds of Shetland’ appends an 
important remark of his own, equally valuable as a matter of fact 
