6380 



Birds, 



bright yellow beak ; its nostrils, which are very large, run all down its beak as far as 

 the bend. There are several others, as the necklace petrel and the beautiful little mow 

 petrel, with which I am not sufficiently acquainted. The stormy petrel is also seen, 

 but is not very common. Many people suppose that these petrels follow the ship all 

 night, and certainly you often see a bird or two flying about at all hours of the night. 

 Once about 1 a.m. a Cape pigeon, as it was flying over the ship, hit against a rope and 

 fell on the deck. You also sometimes see the same bird for two or three days together ; 

 and a naval officer told me that once a Cape pigeon, with a red ribbon round its neck, 

 followed the ship he was in for 1500 miles into 20° S. They say that if the birds 

 were to sleep on the water the ship might be 100 miles off before morning, and as they 

 do not fly high it is not likely that they would find it again ; but it seems to me that 

 this is as absurd as the poet's idea of their sleeping in the air, — 



That oft the sleeping albatross 

 Struck the wild ruins with her wings, 

 And from her cloud-rocked slumberings 

 Started — to find man's dwelling there 

 In her own silent fields of air: 



for although you do 6ee birds at night they are not common : also if you mark twenty 

 or thirty you will seldom see one again ; but sometimes one will appear after two or 

 three days. It seems to me that they sleep on the water, and in the morning, knowing 

 that their best chance of breakfast is in the wake of some ship, they fly high to look 

 for one ; some find the ship they were with before, others another : this seems rendered 

 more probable by the fact that at sunrise very few birds are about the ship, but soon 

 afterwards they begin to arrive in great quantities. — F. Wollaston Hutlon ; Lieut. 

 23rd R. W. Fusiliers. 



Colouring of the Egys of Birds. — I have long been desirous to ascertain some parti- 

 culars respecting the minute anatomy of the mucous membrane of the oviducts of 

 birds, during the laying season, but the opportunity of making the needful observations 

 has not occurred to myself, and year after year I have suffered the proper period to 

 pass without taking adequate steps to obtain the co-operation of those who unite the 

 ability with the opportunity to aid me in the inquiry. It is well known that the eggs 

 of birds differ not only in form but also in colour and texture, and that in many 

 instances the colour and markings of the egg-shell are almost as characteristic as the 

 plumage of the full-grown bird. In the egg-shell of the emu we have a green colour 

 which seems to be analagous to the very remarkable green pigment in the maternal 

 portion of the placenta of the puppy. In that of some other birds, as the Guinea fowl, 

 we see a reddish brown, affording one of many illustrations of the cognate character of 

 the complementary colours green and red. Again the egg-shells of many birds present 

 various shades of deep brown and olive up to perfect black. As an example of the 

 black I would invite especial notice to those of a breed of black ducks. The black 

 colour of these shells is applied in the most irregular manner as regards both the 

 quantity and the distribution. Sometimes the shell is almost universally of a deep 

 black ; sometimes a shell, remarkably white for that of a duck, is partially smeared 

 with black as if daubed with a shoe-brush. The eggs of many birds are spotted in 

 such a manner as to form a characteristic pattern. It seems perfectly reasonable to 

 suppose that there must be some special anatomical arrangement destined to produce 



