ge KINSHIP OF BIRDS, AS SHOWN BY EGGS. 
HINTS AT THE KINSHIP AND HISTORY OF BIRDS, 
AS SHOWN BY THEIR EGGS. 
BY JAMES NEWTON BASKETT, MEXICO, MO. 
In an attempt at an artificial analysis of the nests and 
eggs of North American birds, recently undertaken and not 
yet completed, I have been frequently impressed with re- 
semblances between the eggs of groups often far removed 
from each other. Of course many of these resemblances 
were permanent, and, in all probability, purely accidental ; 
but those sudden variations which are so frequently found in 
the eggs of one species or individual were suggestive. They 
seemed to hint at a struggle in the egg itself to typify an 
ancestry or show a progression, and to shadow a com- 
plexity of origin and tendency, not always shown by the 
bird itself. 
I had begun to make a few notes on the subject; and 
when the Executive Committee of this Congress asked me 
to read a paper on a topic of my own choosing it occurred 
to me that matter enough might be on hand to justify 
expanding. I had no literature bearing directly on the sub- 
ject—in fact I was ignorant of its bibliography; and when 
circumstances developed which deprived me of the time to 
complete my own notes, I felt indeed in’a dilemma. 
I had noted that our common Grackles, or Crow Black- 
birds (Quiscalus guiscula), laid two very distinct types of 
eggs, and that while one of them was clearly the egg of a 
near relative of the Orioles (/ctering), the other just as 
clearly indicated a corvine kinship. When we recall how 
