120 
NESTS AND EGGS OF 
from a beautiful white, through a dark cream, into one that is decidedly 
buff. In some specimens, under a glass of moderate power, the ground is 
a perfectly uniform buff, but in others which appear to the unaided vision 
of the same color, the lens reveals a whitish background very densely 
covered with minute dottings. There is also noticeable considerable varia- 
tion in the markings. Three from a nest in Philadelphia, with a pure- 
white ground-color, are marked with dottings and blotches of light-brown, 
sparsely scattered over the greater portion of their surfaces, excepting a 
space of the size of a dime about either extremity, where a dark and 
almost continuous patch of reddish-brown occurs, relieved by a few small 
spots of blackish-brown. These eggs are nearly spherical, of the ordinary 
shape, and have an average measurement of 1.38 by 1.14 inches. Another 
set, four in number, from near Germantown, Pa., have a light-buff ground, 
and are completely covered with fine markings of brown, and others of 
bolder spots of the same, so as almost to conceal the color below. They 
average the same in dimensions as the preceding, and are similarly shaj>ed. 
A clutch of five from Granville, N. Y., is the exact counterj^art of the 
Germantown specimens in every j>articular. All eggs which we have seen 
from New England, the South, and the West, California in particular, 
though subject to variations in size and ornamentation, are uniform as to 
shape. The length usually varies from 1.32 to 1.49, and the width from 
1.07 to 1.20 inches. 
