r 
> 
WESTERN BLACK-ERONTED DOTTEREL. 
consider that the East Australian form could reach that place : consequently 
Jordon’s name must be used for the West Australian form, replacing 
my own C. m. marngli. 
The following letter will explain itself, but it should be published to 
correct a big mistake in the Catalogue of the Eggs in the British Museum : — 
27, Kendrick Road, 
Rbadino, 
26th March, 1913. 
My Dear Mathews, 
Re the egg figured in the Catalogue of Birds’ Eggs in the British Museum, Vol. 2, 
plate 1, figure 9, as that of (Egialitis geo§royi. 
The history of this is as follows — 
The egg in question was brought from China by me in 1894 and was undoubtedly 
that of Rostratula capensis. As, however, the parent bird was not seen or obtained 
I merely kept it for comparison with eggs in the Museum Collection, intending to destroy 
it after having done so. This I unfortunately omitted to do, and it got mixed up with 
some other eggs I presented. At that time Seebohm was re-arranging the egg collection 
at Cromwell Road, and finding this among my eggs from South China, and seeing that 
it agreed with supposed eggs of (E. geoffroyi collected by Swinhoe, he wrote that name 
on my egg, and thus it was registered as presented by me. 
When Oates was writing the Catalogue, he very naturally supposed I had presented 
the egg ; and as I had told him I had not given the Museum a single specimen that 
I was not thoroughly satisfied with in the matter of correct identification, he wrote 
a paragraph in the Egg Catalogue (Vol. 2, p. 20), saying that all doubts as to the 
authenticity of these eggs had now been set at rest by a properly identified specimen 
presented by me. Fortunately I saw the proofs and was thus able to have this paragraph 
cut out, but the specimen had been plated. 
In “ The Ibis ” 1905, p. 61, I drew attention to this in a footnote, and although 
it was quite correctly printed in the proof submitted to me for correction, when the 
article appeared I found the second and third paragraphs of the footnote had been 
transferred to the body of the article ! 
I wrote correcting the error, and my letter appeared in “ The Ibis ” of the same 
year (1905), p. 287. 
That Seebohm named these eggs by pure guess-work I think you will see by referring 
to what he wrote in “ The Ibis” 1879, p. 154 : “British Birds with Coloured Illustrations 
of their Eggs,” Vol. 3, p. 40 (footnote); and “The Geographical Distribution of 
Plovers, &c.,” p. 147. 
It is strange that in the two last-named works he refers to the Painted Snipe, and 
yet it never seems to have occurred to him that all the eggs he got from Swinhoe were 
those of that species! He saw clearly enough that Swinhoe’s statement that they 
were those of Gharadrius fulvus was wrong, but he certainly did not mend matters 
by attributing some of them to (Egialitis geo^royi. 
I may add that I explained the whole affair to Dr. Bowdler Sharpe, who permitted 
me to withdraw and destroy the egg. 
Beheve me. 
Yours very sincerely, 
C. B. RICKETT. 
143 
