Ch, XXIV.] " WIDE-AWAKE FAIR." 423 



egg, and ■ the, parent bird is nestling over it, and does not 

 leave it until you arrive so close that you could stretch out 

 your arm and take it up. Eggs lay scattered aU over the 

 place, deposited in little hoUows in the sand, about as large 

 as the palm of the hand, which is aU the nest that the 

 "wide-awake" considers necessary; and in several of the 

 rocky crevices in which these eggs were deposited the skele- 

 ton or half-decayed body of an adult bird, but more fre- 

 quently a young one, upon which a number of carrion beetles 

 were busy, showed where it had died and rotted beside the 

 nest. 



At the particular season at which I visited this singular 

 spot, the birds were in every stage of growth, from the newly- 

 hatched chick to the bird with first year's plumage, flying 

 with the rest. Eggs also were abundant, but never more 

 than one in the same nest ; and although the parent bird was 

 in some cases sitting upon fresh or half-hatched ones, in a 

 great many instances the eggs were cracked, and either rot- 

 ten or dried up. Many that I picked up felt light and 

 empty, although scarcely injured, and others which I broke 

 contained carrion beetles or their grubs. The eggs were 

 very variously marked, and had not a little variety of form : 

 the common appearance of them was round at one end and 

 pointed at the other, about the size of a plover's egg, and in 

 colour a whitish ground, blotched with faint purplish and 

 distinct rich brown blotches, which often formed a ring round 

 the larger end ; but some which I noticed were long and 

 pointed at both ends, and without blotches, but speckled 

 with small purplish and brown spots. There was no other 

 kind of bird, however, visible in the whole valley. 



It would be easy for any person to fill a sack with adult 

 birds, although he possessed no other weapon than a stick ; 



