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AND WHAT LIVED IN THEM. 345 
when looking straight at them. Here is a set of Plovers’ 
eggs, and there, not a yard off, one of Terns’; we may sit 
down and examine both together. It may be best, however, 
after noticing carefully the nests and their surroundings, to 
gather a lot of each kind of egg, and carry them home with 
us for more particular examination. 
Properly speaking there are really no “nests” in either 
case. Neither the Tern nor the Plover has any architectural 
instinct, because none is needed. Both lay their eggs in a 
slight hollow in the sand, about four inches in diameter ; but 
even this hollowing is sometimes scarcely appreciable, and 
the eges seem as if dropped by accident on the ground. It 
is probable that at first no hollow, or only the slightest one, 
is made; and that subsequently the depression becomes 
better defined by the movements to which the eggs may be 
subjected, and the weight and motions of the parent birds 
or young. In some instances there is a difference between 
the two kinds of nesting-spots, happening thus: the Plovers 
Sometimes lay in a scanty tuft of slender straggling grass, 
which was not done by any of the Terns, at this breeding- 
place ; and again, the Terns frequently line the depression 
with little flat bits of shell, which the Plovers have not been 
observed to do. Sometimes the pieces of shell scem to have 
been lying there before, and thus only to have been used as 
a nest-lining by accident as it were; in other cases the regu- 
lar disposition of the fragments in a circle, leaves no doubt 
that they were carefully arranged by the birds. This method 
of making a shell-nest is just like that of the Auks aud 
Guillemots, that breed in cracks in the rocks, and raise a 
little platform of pebbles to keep their eggs from the wet; 
and is, doubtless, for the same purpose,—to defend the 
eggs from whatever moisture might be in the sand. Still, 
of two Terns’ nests, side by side, one may have the shells, 
and the other be without them, or at least not have them 
Specially arranged. Neither bird uses any dried grasses, 
AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. III. 44 
