BY D. EMBLETOjS^, M.D. 77 



These spotted rings and their intervening clear spaces may 

 remind the obstetrician of the forcible and painful expulsive 

 efforts, separated by intervals of quiet and ease that always 

 occur during the progress of human parturition. 



Occasionally, but rarely, we find at the small end a similar 

 terminal blotch or a zone of coloured spots or blotches more or 

 less regular a little way from the apex, as on eggs of the Osprey 

 and the Honey Buzzard. But never more than one such ring 

 has been found in the collections above cited, at the small end of 

 the egg. See Plate II., figs. 1 and 3. 



There are, again, other eggs, the surface of which is as afore- 

 said dark red all over, and has various irregularly placed blotches 

 of a still darker colour, as in the case of some of the Rapaces and 

 Tetraonidce. 



Such, it is believed, have required continuous and great ef- 

 forts at expulsion, though it is quite possible that in these cases 

 there may have been greater excitement and turgescence of the 

 mucous membrane, and perhaps greater delicacy of the blood 

 vessels than in others. The passage of such eggs was probably 

 accompanied with a great deal of pain, which in the laying of 

 white eggs may have been absent. 



Eggs, like those of Emherizm and especially of the Guillemots, 

 are at times most curioiisly streaked with narrow dark lines run- 

 ning in angles and curves, and even circles, in the most irregular 

 manner, and often intricately intersecting each other. Such eggs 

 as these have in all probability not gone continuously on in their 

 downward course, either in a straight or in a spiral direction, but 

 during the escape of blood have been rolled about, nervously or 

 hysterically, as it were, in various directions, up and down, 

 from side to side and round about, by the irregular action of the 

 muscular walls of the oviduct ; or it may be that the oviduct has 

 undergone many and various local contractions and relaxations, 

 both itself and the Qi%% moving about irregularly. Tliis peculiar 

 kind of marking occurs almost always at the large end of the 

 egg. In the case of some foreign as well as British birds' eggs, 

 such streaks are intermixed very curiously with spots, as in those 

 of Chaffinches, etc. 



