THE MARKINGS AND COLOURING OF EGGS. 34S 



These eggs we took away, for it would only be cruel to allow a 

 brood to be hatched at this season, only to starve and die before 

 they could possibly be strong enough of wing to shift for them- 

 selves. And here, in connection with these same sparrow eggs, let 

 us record a fact that seems to have hitherto escaped the notice of 

 our oologists (egg-students), even the most lynx-eyed and observant 

 of them, and it is this : that in the case of such of our wild-birds 

 as breed more than once in a single season, the eggs of the second 

 laying, and of the third, if third laying there is — of all eggs, in 

 short, dropped after the first laying — are, as a rule, either entirely 

 free from spots, or, if they have the spots, they are so faint as to 

 be scarcely distinguishable. In the case of the sparrow eggs, for 

 example, taken from the nest as just related, they were perfectly 

 spotless, pearl-white and clean as they could be. Even under a 

 lens of considerable power they presented hardly a trace of spot or 

 colouring in any form. And yet take an egg from a sparrow's 

 nest in early spring — from the first laying that is — and you wUl 

 invariably find it to be spotted or blotched with a perfect constella- 

 tion, so to speak, round its larger end of greyish and dusky brown 

 dots and markings. On due examination, we suspect it will be 

 found to-be the same in the case of all our "spotted" egg layers ; 

 and to this fact, that has been so unaccountably overlooked hitherto, 

 is to be mainly attributed, we make no doubt, the many dissensions 

 and disagreements that so frequently have set our best, and other- 

 wise good-natured, oologists by the ears. In another particular, 

 too, the eggs of later laying differ from those of the first — in the • 

 thickness, namely, of the shell; that of the later laying being 

 thinner and more fragile in the handling. On account of their 

 fragility, in4eed, it is extremely difficult to Mow without damaging 

 an egg of this kind, taken from one of our smaller bird's nests 

 towards the close of the season. All which, the faintness of colour- 

 ing in or total absence of the spots, with the thinness, transparency, 



