STERNA SEENA. 
1005 
show more solicitude for their eggs than any of the other species breeding near them. It is impossible to 
doubt when they have eggs anywhere near ; the way they flash backwards and forwards, and wheel round and 
round overhead, incessantly repeating their shrill plaintive cry, at once reveals the existence of the treasures 
they are so anxious to preserve.” Regarding the incubation of the eggs, he writes that at the season when 
they lay " the bare white glittering sands on which the eggs are deposited are often at noon-tide too hot to 
touch ; and accordingly, during the daytime, the birds seem to trust to the heat of the sun to hatch the eggs, 
and are rarely to be found on their nests ; they pass the time wheeling round and round above, or snoozing 
beside them. ' By night every egg is covered by one or other of the parent birds ; and when it is dark they sit 
so close that it is easy to catch them with a common butterfly-net.” The eggs are usually three in number; 
and a series that I have examined in the collection of Mr. Howard Saunders are pale olivaceous stone-colour, 
some brown, others greener in tint ; they vary in shape from long to broad ovals. The markings are moderately- 
sized blots and spots of dark red, purplish red, and red-brown, pretty evenly distributed over the surface of 
the shell, and mingled with blotches or small clouds of bluish grey and purple-grey underlying the dark 
markings. Dimensions of some examples in Mr. Saunders's collection are T67 by IT 7, 1*84 by 1’25, and 
1-48 by 1T7 inch, showing that considerable variation in size exists. 
6n2 
