142 BULLETIN 107, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
who thought they could find their nests, but in vain. The nesting 
of the marbled murrelet is one of the unsolved mysteries in Ameri- 
can ornithology. This is rather remarkable, too, because it is really 
an abundant bird in a fairly accessible region. Mr. George G. Cant- 
well (1898) took a nearly perfect specimen of an egg from the 
oviduct of a bird shot in the Prince of Wales Archipelago on May 
23, 1897, which is now in the United States National Museum col- 
lection. He writes: 
A careful watch failed to reveal any nesting sites, and on inquiring of 
the Indians about it they told me that they had always supposed the bird 
to breed high up on the mountains in hollow trees. One old fellow declared 
he had found the young in such places. As I had previously noticed the birds 
flying about high overhead at dusk I resolved to look into the matter and spent. 
many hours searching for them in the woods, but without success. 
It seems hardly likely that these birds should nest in hollow trees, 
but there is some evidence to indicate that they breed somewhere 
in the mountains, perhaps in holes or crevices in the rocks or under 
large stones. Dr. Joseph Grinnell (18970) says that the Indians 
hear them “at night passing high over the mountains and islands.” 
And Mr. W. L. Dawson (1909) writes: 
At Glacier, on the North Fork of the Nooksack River, and near the foot 
of Mount Baker, having risen before daybreak for an early bird walk, on the 
morning of May 11, 1905, I heard voices from an invisible party of marbled 
murrelets high in the air as they proceeded down the valley as though to repair 
to the sea for the day’s fishing. 
Eggs.—tThe egg, referred to above as taken from the oviduct of a 
bird by Mr. Cantwell, is apparently the only positively identified 
egg of this species in existence. It is “cylindrical ovate”-in shape. 
The ground color is “pale chalcedony yellow”; it is uniformly, but 
aot thickly spotted with small spots of very dark “blackish brown” 
or nearly black. It is too badly broken to be measured accurately. 
There are two eggs in the United States National Museum, collected 
by Ferd. Bischoff at Sitka, Alaska, in June 1866, which are supposed 
to be eggs of the marbled murrelet. Major Bendire was evidently 
in doubt about the authenticity of these eggs, but they are much 
smaller than any of our large series of ancient murrelets’ eggs and 
different in shape; they closely resemble certain eggs of Xantus’s 
murrelet, which might be expected in such a closely related species. 
In shape they are elongate ovate. In one the ground color is “ pink- 
ish buff,” which is heavily blotched, splashed and clouded about 
both ends with “cinnamon brown” and some darker shades. In 
the other the ground color is “light buff,’ which is more evenly cov- 
ered with small spots of drab and dark browns, also splashed and 
washed about both ends with “snuff brown” and lighter shades of 
brown. These two eggs measure 54 by 36 and 54 by 36.2 millimeters 
