io8 Darwin and Romanes dealt with. 



of the American species as told us by Nuttall and 

 Burroughs, and by Thoreau, whose wonderfully- 

 graphic description may here be given : 



" There was one egg still, and by the side of it a 

 little pinch of down fluttered out and was not ob- 

 served at first. More than a foot down the hill had 

 rolled half the shell it had come out of." 



Where, I would ask, was the other half ? Thoreau's 

 eye would not have missed it had it been there. May 

 be the mother had just then gone off with it thirty or 

 forty yards at least and had not got back for the 

 second half when Thoreau came along too near. The 

 inside of the egg, you see, was not protectively 

 coloured like the outside, and would have told her 

 secret too clearly. That mother night-jar or night- 

 hawk would not forget that — believe me ! 



" There was no callowness as in the young of most 

 birds," Thoreau goes on. " It seemed a singular 

 place for a young bird to begin its life, this little 

 pinch of down, and lie still on the exact spot where 

 the egg lay — a flat, exposed shelf on the side of a 

 bare hill, with nothing but the whole heavens, the 

 broad universe above it, to brood it when its mother 

 was away." 



But she was not far away, nor would be away for 

 long. The second half of the egg shell would go 

 after the next short sitting on the egg to keep it 

 warm. 



