102 PROF. NEWTON ON NEW BIRDs' EGGS. [Jau. 24, 



intending, as I had done on a former occasion, to contribute a paper 

 respecting them to our ' Proceedings.' To my dismay, however, 

 when about to give instructions to the artist who was to draw the 

 plate iUustrating the paper, it was found that one of the most inter- 

 esting novelties (the egg of Diduncuhis strigirostris) was missing 

 from the care of our excellent Secretary. Thus deprived of my 

 chief ornament, I thought it better to defer the printing of the 

 paper ; and this I did the more willingly, because Mr. Sclater as- 

 sured me that the absent specimen was only mislaid, and would cer- 

 tainly be found again in the course of time. The result has proved 

 as he predicted ; the lost sheep turned up a few weeks ago ; and ac- 

 cordingly I now reproduce the remarks I made nearly two years 

 ago, adding observations on some other specimens which have in 

 the meantime come into my possession. 



When in 1861 I first brought some oological specimens before 

 the Society (P. Z. S. 18G1, p. 393) I must confess to having taken 

 rather too sanguine a view of the utility of oology as a help to classi- 

 fication. Further experience and the examination of very large series 

 of specimens have almost induced in me a belief vrhich perhaps 

 might be best expressed by parodying the celebrated saying of a 

 cclebi'ated man, and would almost make me define oology as " a 

 science in which size and colour go for nothing at all, and shape and 

 grain for very little." However, notwithstanding Voltaire's epigram, 

 no one doubts there is a science of etymology ; and since his time 

 philologists have begun to get a right riotion of the value of vowels 

 and consonants. I therefore hope oology may yet keep its rank, 

 and that in time we may come to comprehend the very variable cha- 

 racters which birds' eggs present in their size, colour, shape, and 



Swallow-tailed Kite. 



,Elanoides furcahis (Linnaeus) . 



So much interest has long been attached to the breeding of this 

 bird that, though I had no specimen of its egg to exhibit, 1 thought 

 myself justified in 1865 in reading some notes with which my fiiend 

 Mr. H. E. Dresser had furnished me. These, however, have since 

 appeared in print (Ibis, 1865, p. 325-327), and I need say no more 

 on the subject, except to remark that the four eggs which are stated 

 to have been obtained for him have not yet reached England. 



Nutcracker. 



Nucifraga caryocatactes (Linnaeus). (PI. XV. fig. 2.) 



Thanks to my friends HH. Pastor Theobald and i. C. H. Fischer 

 of Copenhagen, I have at length the pleasure of exhibiting to the 

 Society the nest and four eggs of the Nutcracker, taken in the same 

 locality as the nest and fully-fledged young bird which I exhibited 

 in June 1862 (P. Z. S. 1862, p. 206), and by the same persons. 

 In 1863 my friends were again disappointed of getting the eggs of 

 this bird, which proved to be a still earlier builder than they had 



