ON BIEDS’-NESTING. 
79 
At all naturalists’ shops steel drills and blow-pipes are kept in 
stock ; hut you will do better by getting a brass blow-pipe from an 
ironmonger and filing the small end carefully so as to reduce its 
thickness. A perfectly fresh egg (unless it is that of a game bird 
or duck) needs a very small hole from which to expel the contents ; 
a sei’ies of gentle puffs under the opening will generally clear them 
out. If the egg is slightly incubated, of course the hole must be 
drilled larger and the point of the blow-pipe inserted; then a steady 
current of air, without undue pressure, answers the purpose. 
Mechanical contrivances have been sold for egg -bio wing: I 
purchased one at a cost of twenty shillings, and broke more eggs 
than I saved. You cannot mechanically measure the pressure put 
upon an egg as you can do when you use your lips and lungs. Do 
not be tempted by any arrangement of bellows, all such things are a 
snare and a delusion. 
Having expelled the contents of an egg, the blow-pipe should he 
filled with warm water and a jet blown into the orifice until the 
shell is about one-third filled. The egg should now be gently 
shaken about to cleanse the interior, and the water forced out with 
the empty blow-pipe. Lastly, the egg should be placed, hole down- 
wards, on blotting-paper, being kept in position by the use of a 
little cotton w r ool. When an egg has been so far prepared for the 
cabinet, the place where it was found and the date should bo written 
with a fine erowquill pen upon the perforated side; thus on one egg 
in the Wren’s nest previously referred to I wrote above the hole 
“ Hal stow” and below it “ 7/5/S-L” and thus I had a record for 
future reference. 
As regards the arrangement of eggs or nests in the cabinet, 
various methods have been adopted. My own plan for my collection 
of eggs was chosen with an object. I intended to draw them upon 
stone for reproduction on my chromo-lithographic plates, therefore 
I desired to have them so fixed that I could copy the exact markings. 
In order to do this satisfactorily I chose the unorthodox plan of 
fixing my eggs with gum-tragacanth upon cardboard and pinning 
the cards into an entomological cabinet. This plan has the advan- 
tage of showing a good series with all variations at a glance, and it 
has a very neat and pretty effect, but it is considered very bad form 
for a scientific collection. 
Another plan which I adopted for a series of eggs of Indian birds 
and a few others, is to fill your cabinet drawer with carefully made 
glass-topped boxes. Inside each of these you fit a narrow wcoden frame 
formed of four thin pieces of lath fastened together with minnikin 
pins. Above the latter is placed a card perforated with egg-shaped 
holes and covered by a sheet of rose-coloured v T adding. The eggs 
are then pressed into the holes, the lid shut down, and a label with 
the name of the bird fixed on the glass outside. A variation on the 
above is made by cutting a large circle in the card, so that the 
centre of the sheet of wool forms a shallow nest in which the eggs 
are placed loosely. 
