140 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XV 
apply myself to the task as a whole, and produce a mass of measurements (aver- 
ages), to have brought to light a great quantity of important scientific history of 
them, and, finally, to have given illustrations in color of the eggs of all our 
Liiiiicouc. The work would have occupied me for the better part of a year, and, 
as I have just remarked, my time would not at present admit of such an under- 
taking. 
It has occurred to me, however, that an introduction to the study of the eggs 
of the birds of this group would be of no little value. The results of such an ex- 
amination are presented here, and all that I have been able to set forth is due to 
my study of the elegant collection of birds’ eggs composing the cabinets of Mr. 
Edward J. Court of Washington, D. C., to whom I am very glad to acknowledge 
my indebtedness. 
Mr. Court's collection is at his own home. He has allowed me to borrow 
from it, in preparing this paper, all the eggs of shore birds that I could possibly 
use, and I may say here that he has trays of them, filled almost to overflowing, 
the result of scientific collecting extending over many years. 
In this collection I find the eggs of Phalaropes ; of the Avocet and Black- 
necked Stilt ; Woodcock, European and Wilson Snipe ; the Dunlin and Black- 
tailed Godwit ; Willets, the Ruff, Plovers, Sandpipers, the Long-billed Curlew 
(eighteen specimens), the Wdiimbrel, the Lapwing, three species of Oyster- 
catcher, and others. Examples of all these were taken to my home, where I made 
photographs of them (each specimen natural size) ; they are reproduced as the 
six figures illustrating this article. 
With respect to the position of the Limicolcc in the system, based upon the 
morphology of the known members of the group, it has been found that they foim 
a Suborder, which in my Classification of Birds, I place between the Supersub- 
order CharadriiFormes and the Supersuborder Stereornithiformes L 
As we know, the Limicolcc, or “Shore Birds”, are arranged between the 
Ralli and the GaUince in the classification adopted for the A. O. U. Check-List 
(1910), a relationship that is not supported by the anatomy of the birds in ques- 
tion, whatever other factor may have been employed toward the adoption of such 
a scheme. And again, the Limicolcc, in the A. O. U. Check-List, are divided into 
seven families, namely the Phalaropodicicc, containing the phalaropes ; the Recur- 
z'irostridcc, or the avocets and stilts; the Scolopacidcc (snipes, sandpipers, etc.) ; 
the Charadriidcc (plovers) ; the AphrLidcc (surf-birds and turnstones) ; the 
Hccmatopodidcc (oyster-catchers), and the Jacanidcc containing the jacanas. 
This assemblage, in tbe Lnited States avifauna, is represented by about sev- 
enty-seven species and subspecies combined, the great bulk of them belonging to 
the Scolopacidcc and the Charadriidcc, or the great snipe-plover group. 
So numerous is this array that it would be cpiite out of the c(uestion to de- 
scribe and compare the eggs of all of them in this article. In many instances it 
is impossible to distinguish the eggs of a subspecies from a species, as most o51og- 
ists know. With this fact in mind — taken in connection with the rarity of the 
eggs of some of the species, rendering photographs of the latter the more de- 
sirable for publication — I selected the eggs which are here figured for my pur- 
pose. 
To represent the phalaropes, choice was made of the eggs of the Red and 
Wilson Phalaropes, and the illustrations of them are here given on fig. 41, nos. 1-8. 
It will at once be observed that the eggs of the latter bird are considerably larger 
1 . Shufeldt, R. W., An Arrangement of the Families and the Higher Groups of Birds. Amer. Nat. vol. 
xxxviii, nos. 455-456, Nov.-Dee., 1904. 
