48 
zacreased nourishment of foed, the process by which 
domesticated birds in changing their habits are led 
to lay a continuance of eggs for a long season,.— 
‘The egg-gatherers are carefal observers of the pro- 
gress of incubation and take only the eggs they 
know to be fresh laid. These are a part of the 
regulations they require to be observed, or the con- 
stant depredations committed on the birds would 
fatally thin their numbers. 
Without going into the discussion of naturalists, 
who seein the different colours of eggs a certain 
relation to circumstances favourable to concealment, 
it may be observed that the -blotched egg, laid by 
the hydrochelidon fuliginosa, properly distinguished — 
as the egg-bird, is found among sticks and dried 
leaves of the suriana, whilst the white eges of the 
boobies and petrels, are deposited in hollows of the 
coral rocks amid sand and chalky dung There is 
one curious coincidence between the. eggs of the 
noddy, megalopterus stolidus, and the peculiarities 
of the nest that must not however be unremarked. 
The elaborate pile of sticks slightly hollowed, in 
which they deposit their eggs, is always embellished 
with breken sea-shells, speckled and spotted like 
the eggs. Audobon records the same occurrence 
in the nests of the noddy-terns he inspected in the 
Florida Keys. The ebvious suggestion for this 
curious prevalence of instinct is deceptiveness, 
arising from similarity between the egg-shell and 
the sea shell. The nests are pillaged by what is 
called the laughing-gull, the xema atricilla, not 
the ridibundus; the numerous empty shells lying 
