COLOUR IN BIRDS’ EGGS. 211 
Familiarity with pale and warm-tinted flowers, and with the 
dotted orange, red, purple, or black anthers, may possibly 
account for the coloration of this type of egg. 
Many birds which nest in trees or bushes have eggs which 
are of a pale or darker green ground hue, speckled or splashed 
over with olive or brown, reminding one of the different shades 
of the surrounding foliage, and, moreover, difficult to see from a 
distance through a bower of leaves. Such are the eggs of the 
Crows, Magpies, and Crow-shrikes, the species of Grauculus, the 
English Blackbirds, and the Australian Mountain Thrush and 
Robins [Petroica, Drymodes, &c.]. In this case both origin and 
use of the colour are apparent. 
Eggs with irregular streaky lines of bizarre appearance are 
found in a few families. In England, the Yellowhammers and 
Buntings are good examples. In Australia, we have the Poma- 
tostomi. The eggs of the latter are about an inch long, and 
three quarters of an inch at the widest, olive-brown, with all 
kinds of hieroglyphic pencillings in black. Both families line 
their nests with hair, and the eggs are protected by their resem- 
blance to the lining of the nest. Gould similarly remarks, in 
speaking of the Victorian Lyre-bird, “the colour resembles, in 
fact so closely that of the feathers with which the nest is lined, 
that it is not easy to detect the egg.” 
Eggs of a pale bluish or greenish uniform tint are common. 
Such neutral tints are found in the Grebes, Cormorants, Swans, 
Ducks, and Geese, the Mangrove Bitterns, the Glossy Ibis; and 
attaining to the deepest and loveliest shade in the Herons. Just 
as the hue of the eggs of the Pheasants, &c., may have been 
suggested by that of mother earth ever before their eyes, so 
these tints of the water-birds’ eggs may have arisen from the 
contemplation of vast sheets of water, and the consequent 
impression upon the mental organisation of the parents. This 
peculiarity of colour, too, has been of service in rendering the 
eggs less easy of detection, as being of neutral hues, or as 
resembling, more or less, the water around or near the nest. 
But the brightest blues of all occur, very exceptionally, in 
groups of birds of totally different habits, in no way adapted to 
an aquatic life. Such are, for instance, amongst English birds, 
the Thrush and the Starling, the Hedge Sparrow and Lesser 
Redpoll, the Wheatear, and to a less extent, the Stonechat and 
