JAMES NEWTON BASKETT. gy 



of egg-formation. But, so far as known, no reptile exhibits 

 anything like it, so that color in birds' eggs is likely signi- 

 ficant, and this form of nesting may be a degeneration. 



The greens and blues noted accord well with living 

 vegetation. Perhaps their persistence now as the basis of 

 modern ground-colors is due to the persistence of chlorophyl. 

 The leaf is older than the egg. At least they seem now to 

 be the only colors inherently or deeply involved withm the 

 shell, and they show evidences of being the basis of the 

 deepest or earliest spotting. Perhaps the first divergence 

 from sand-nesting and the first step toward incubation was 

 by placing the eggs upon growing vegetation ; and the browns 

 may have come in later, as indicated in their usually being 

 more superficial (whether as spots or continuous coloring), 

 and typify a time when dead grass became the nest- 

 material. This was an era of progress, perhaps, for dead 

 grass means after separation from its root, and thus hints at 

 nest-building on the part of the parent. 



The browns are perhaps founded in the solid suffusions 

 of the creams and buffs so frequently yet seen in our 

 grounds; and are doubtless held there yet by the persistence 

 of the old superinducing influence of the strawy color of 

 ripened vegetation so much used in nest-structure. 



That the blues are very basic is found in another fact, 

 that in some eggs they pervade the shell to the interior in 

 great intensity. In a broken egg of the Turkey Vulture 

 (Cathartes aura) in my collection, many spots that are faint 

 lilac externally show on the inside as a deep indigo blue, 

 while the pale browns are not visible at all from beneath 

 except by transmitted light. In the egg of a Bartram's 

 Sandpiper {Bartramia longicaudd) there are faint brown 

 spots on the outside which have no internal showing, and 

 faint bluish spots inside that do not show at all outwardly, 

 even in the unmarked places. To my mind the suggestion 

 comes that many of our early birds with spotted eggs may 

 have reverted from green and dead grass nesting to shingly or 

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