192 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



■eggs white, whilst those of the other species are coloured. The 

 eggs of numbers of aquatic birds — notably ducks and geese — 

 and those of pigeons and doves are white, but are not laid 

 in any of the above situations. Those of aquatic birds I take 

 to be simply the original type, those of the pigeons I will 

 mention later. The eggs of the night-jars ( Aegotheles Novcb- 

 HollandiceJ, with the exception of the owlet, might, perhaps, be 

 taken as an exception to the above rules ; but if we inquire into 

 the cause of variation we find that the bird is not of nearly such 

 a sleepy disposition as the owls and podargi, and that the eggs, 

 being laid on the ground, need protective colouring. 



We now come to those families which lay eggs coloured so as 

 to resemble surrounding objects, for the sake of protection. 

 Those mentioned by Mr. Lucas as laying egg?:, of protective 

 <:olour on the bare ground are sandpipers, dottrels, grouse, 

 quail, rail, night-jars, plovers, terns, oyster-catchers, and gulls. 

 The eggs of the above, as he says, "exhibit different shades of 

 the soil or of the rocks, with an appropriate ornamentation of 

 spots, blotches, and smears." To these we may add the 

 Australian prantincoles, stilts and avocets, the snipe, and some 

 species of the lark family, notably the English skylark and our 

 own pipit fAnthus Australis ) . 



Coming to those which lay very highly-coloured eggs, we 

 have those of the honey-eaters, all of which build open nests 

 and lay eggs varying from a " rich salmon-red" ground tint to 

 a " bufFy-white," all more or less spotted or blotched with 

 reddish markings, the English hedge-sparrow and its congener 

 (the mountain accentor of Europe), the buntings of the same 

 country, the reed warblers (amongst whose eggs we find the 

 colours lilac, yellow, green and brick-red), the bullfinch (whose 

 eggs are of a lively blue-green), thrush, wheatear, and lesser- 

 redpole, with the Australian cranes, zosterops ciricloramphce, a 

 genus of the lark family, the yellow and dusky robins, and the 

 coach-whip bird and wedge-bill. 



The eggs of all the above are laid in open nests, but I may 

 obse'rve that where the nest is sufficiently shallow we find 

 brightly-coloured eggs in domed nests ; such are those of the 

 little Chthonicola (allied to the Sericornes), the Cisticola or 

 grass-warbler, and several others of the same familj'. And now 

 let us inquire into the reason for the colouration of the first 

 and third classes of the above (or, rather, it will be the non- 

 colouration of the first class) ; those of the second class, having 

 protective tints, explain themselves. With JMr. Lucas' explana- 

 tion of the origin of the colour in eggs generally — viz., that it 

 is coj>ied by the bird from surrounding objects — I quite agree ; for 

 I do not suppose a bird capable of imagining and transmitting 

 to its eggs a colour which it had never, or rarely, seen. But 

 I think that he has totally failed to account for the above 



