BY WAY OF APPENDIX. 
231 
which I once read in an English work on birds 
described the eggs as pale leaden in colour : the 
writer had described them as he saw them in some 
collection in this country. Again, there were the 
elliptical eggs, large as pullets' eggs, of the Guira 
cuckoo, the ground colour of the purest turquoise 
blue, the shell spattered with rough raised spots 
white as driven snow. This exquisite white and 
blue shell became tarnished merely by being held 
in the hand, and no washing would serve to bring 
its purity back. After being a few months in a 
cabinet it was a pale dull blue egg spotted with 
dirty white. 
If these beautiful eggs, in their first fresh loveli- 
ness, with others just as beautiful (or fac-similes 
of them), could be shown to some one who had only 
seen the dull-hued eggs of a few common British 
species, he would, I imagine, exclaim, " Oh, impos- 
sible ! these gems of colour came from no birds ; 
they are egg-shaped stones, but in appearance 
unlike any stones I have ever seen." It is this 
same mineral character in the appearance of the 
egg-shell which makes it imitable. To imitate 
the surface — plain, granulated, pitted, or polished 
— would be very easy ; the difficulty of getting the 
translucent appearance seen in some eggs has, as 
I have said, already been overcome; the colours, 
where colour exists, could be put on by hand, and 
burnt in to be made imperishable. 
