136 BULLETIN 107, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
gins. Occasionally two birds will occupy the same nest; at least I have found 
three and four eggs in one, and I have also found one in the nest of a red- 
breasted merganser (Merganser serrator). During the day, while the breeding 
season is on, a very few birds may be seen near land, but offshore they will be 
met with in small flocks of from 6 to 8, and occasionally, a flock of 100 or more 
can be seen. 
Eggs.—The eggs of the ancient murrelet are quite unique and en- 
tirely unlike the eggs of any of the other Alcidae. Major Bendire 
(1895) has described them very well as follows: 
In shape they vary from elliptical ovate to elongate and cylindrical ovate, 
the elongated ovates predominating. Their shell is fine grained, moderately 
strong, although rather thin, and it shows little or no gloss. They are rather 
difficult to describe accurately, their ground color being variable and of 
subtle tints not readily expressed on paper, ranging from a bluish milky white 
through the different shades of cream color, vinaceous, olive, and salmon buffs 
to a rich vinaceous cinnamon and ecru-drab color. They are generally mod- 
erately well flecked, blotched, or spotted with small irregular shaped markings 
of different shades of brown, fawn, and Isabella color, mixed with more subdued 
shades of ecru drab, lavender, and lilac gray. The markings are distributed. 
over the entire surface, and are usually heaviest about the larger end of the 
egg but never so profuse as to hide the ground color. In an occasional speci- 
men, they show a tendency to run into irregular and mostly longitudinal lines 
or tracings; in others these markings are more bold, coarse, and fewer in 
humbers, and a single specimen before me now shows comparatively few and 
rather faint markings. 
The measurements of 51 eggs, in the United States National 
Museum collection, average 61.1 by 38.6 millimeters; the eggs show- 
ing the fourth extremes measure 64.3 by 40.3, 60.5 by 42, 57.5 by 
36.5, and 57.8 by 35.7 millimeters. 
Young.—About the period of incubation and development of the 
young, Mr. Littlejohn says: 
I left the rookery on July 3, and was therefore unable to determine the 
period of incubation, or the time the young remain in the nest, but in former 
years off the coast of some of the Kuril Islands, I have seen numbers of old 
birds accompanied by half grown young, still unable to fly, about the middle of 
September, sometimes 400 or 500 miles from land, thus proving that they must 
leave their breeding grounds when still very small. At that age, the young, 
like the old, are great divers, and no matter how long the parent remained 
below, or how far she dived, the young would always break water at the same 
time and in the same place, just at the old bird’s tail. During the winter they 
scatter and can be found in small numbers most anywhere about or between the 
islands, and at this time they also associate with the crested and least auklets 
(Simorhynchus cristatellus and S. pusillus) and the marbled murrelet (Bra- 
chyramphus marmoratus.) 
On Forrester Island this species evidently nests earlier than on 
Sanak Island, for Prof. Harold Heath (1915) found newly hatched 
chicks as early as May 29, 1918, and they “were very abundant dur- 
ing the second week in June.” He has given us the following in- 
