THE ZooLocist—NovEMBER, 1876. 516] 
Scarce Birds at Torquay.— Yesterday afternoon, while in Torquay, 
I called at Shopland’s, the birdstuffer, to enquire if any uncommon species 
had been brought to him lately, and was informed that, within the present 
month, he had received one hoopoe, one little gull, two Sandwich terns, one 
Richardson’s skua, one rednecked grebe, and one lesser tern. All these birds 
‘ were obtained in Torbay; and, strange to say, the little gull and Sandwich 
terns were shot the same day by two gentlemen who were quite unacquainted 
with their value or rarity, and one of the terns was ordered to be made up 
to adorn a lady's hat! How often rare birds fall into the hands of people 
who do not appreciate them, and what numbers must be thrown away 
unnoticed and unrecorded! I saw the little gull and remaining Sandwich 
tern, and both were in good plumage and cleanly shot, although the larger 
wing and tail-feathers of the latter were somewhat worn. Besides these 
birds, I was shown a tern I could not quite make out, but believe it to be 
an immature black tern: it was killed a few days ago on the Dorset coast.— 
Gervase I’. Mathew ; H.M.S. ‘ Britannia,’ Dartmouth, October 18, 1876. 
The Time of Day at which Birds lay their Eggs.— Mr. Boyes (Zool. 
S.S. 5115) again calls attention to a paragraph in the ‘ Zoologist’ for 1862, 
as quoted by Mr. Cordeaux, in which Dr. Saxby is made to assert, as the 
result of careful observation of twenty species of our insessorial birds, that 
as a general rule they lay their eggs between the hours of 7 and 12 p.m. 
I have looked through the indices to the MS. journals, and can find no 
clue to the matter, but am strongly of opinion that Mr. Boyes’ surmise is 
correct, and that my brother must have written, or intended to write, a. m. 
and not p.m. Indeed it is hardly conceivable that observations could by any 
possibility be made on which to found the assertion as quoted. The subject 
had evidently received considerable attention from him, one of the last pages 
of the MS. of his ‘ Birds of Shetland,’ written in 1873, having a remark 
"upon the irregularity of the guillemot in its hour of laying, as exceeding 
that of any other bird known to him. I have been told by a very accurate 
observer that among domestic poultry and caged birds it is the rule that 
each successive egg of the batch is laid at a later time in the morning than 
the previous one.—Stephen H. Saxby; East Clevedon, Somerset, October 2, 
1876. 
On the Causes of Variation in Species—In Mr. Rowley’s ‘ Ornithological 
Miscellany’ (part v., p. 15), Mr. Sharpe says, ‘No doubt isolation has a 
great deal to do with variation in the barn owls, the tendency to a dark 
colour being a character of all the insular forms, excepting the Jamaican and 
British birds, which are extremely light-coloured.” I do not think, how- 
ever, that a tendency to a dark colour in some species is accounted for 
satisfactorily. How can we account for the dark continental form of the 
barn owl? How do we account for the very dark North Russian form of 
Hirundo riparia, while other species, such as Parus cinctus, Pratincola 
