STERNA SEENA. 1005 



show more solicitude for their eggs than any of the other species breeding near them. It is impossible to 

 doubt when they have eggs anywhere near ; the way they flash backwards and forwards, and wheel round and 

 round overhead, incessantly repeating their shrill plaintive cry, at once reveals the existence of the treasures 

 they are so anxious to preserve" Regarding the iucubation of the eggs, he writes that at the season when 

 they lay " the bare white glittering sands on which the eggs are deposited are often at noon-tide too hot to 

 touch ; and accordingly, during the daytime, the birds seem to trust to the heat of the sun to hatch the eggs, 

 and are rarely to be found on their nests ; they pass the time wheeling round and round above, or snoozing 

 beside them. By night every egg is covered by one or other of the parent birds ; and when it is dark they sit 

 so close that it is easy to catch them with a common butterfly-net." The eggs are usually three in number ; 

 and a series that I have examined in the collection of Mr. Howard Saunders are pale olivaceous stone-colour, 

 some brown, others greener in tint ; they vary in shape from long to broad ovals. The markings are moderately- 

 sized blots and spots of dark red, purplish red, and red-brown, pretty evenly distributed over the surface of 

 the shell, and mingled with blotches or small clouds of bluish grey and purple-grey underlying the dark 

 markings. Dimensions of some examples in Mr. Saunders's collection are 1*67 by 1'17, 1"84 by 1*25, and 

 1-48 by 1*17 inch, showing that considerable variation in size exists. 



6n2 



