176 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XVI 
different from any of those laid by the grebes, in so far as I have studied them. 
Loon's eggs never show any chalky deposit upon them, the shells being 
more or less glossy and rather thick. In color, they range all the way from a 
clear di-ah to a deep vandyke-hrown. They may he finely speckled all over 
with a hlack-lirown, never thickly, or, what is more commonly the case, tlie 
spots are large and irregular, in some specimens amounting to heavy blotches. 
They are extremely difficult ob.iects to photograph, owing to the glossy shells 
and the markings and ground color both being shades of brown, thus render- 
ing it difficult to bring out the spots. The series of figures of loons’ eggs in 
Reed's hook, cited above, are excellent exemplifications of the difficulties in 
(luestion. Some of the markings in those figures, as fine as they are in some 
respects, have evidently been touchd up with a brush prior to reproduction 
from the photographs. 
In figure 52 (nos. 11, 12 and 13) 1 present three illustrations of Common 
T;Oon’s eggs (Garia immcr)\ kindly selected for me from the elegant collection 
of the Ik S. National Miiseum by Dr. Charles W. Richmond of the Division of 
Birds of that Institution. They were photographed by me, natural size, and 
they well represent the extreme of ground color and markings as well as range. 
No. 11 was taken in the Adirondack region, Noav York, and the collector 
is not known to me (coll. U. S. National l\ruseum, no. 28300). This is the most 
remarkable loon’s egg T have ever seen; it is of a rich olive-drah color, very 
spai’sely flecked with very fine hroAvn specks ; it measures 3.51x2.25. 
The beautiful specimen shown in no. 12 is considerably larger (coll. U. S. 
National Museum, no. 17977), as it measures 3.80x2.31; it is elegantly spotted 
with scattered spots of different sizes of a uniform hlackish-hrown as shown in 
no. 12. This egg was collected by George A. Boardman at St. Stevens, New 
Brunswick; it is a very different looking egg from the one shown in no. 13 of 
the same figure, which not only is of a much deeper hroAvn, hut the hlackish- 
hrown mai'kings are, in many instances, much larger, while the egg itself is 
much smaller, being but 3.48x2.23 (coll. U. S. Nat. Mus., no. 24038, nat. size). 
This specimen was collected near New Cumberland House, Canada, by ]\Ir. R. 
]\IcFar]ane. 
In the coloring of these eggs of G. immor, there is a sul)tle shade of olive 
present, and this will account for Reed saying that the ground color of Loon’s 
eggs is of a “dark greenish brown’’ {loc. cit., p. 7). This writer gives, in the 
book cited, fine, natural-size illusti’ations of the eggs of G. immer, G. aclamsi, 
G. arctica, G. pacifica and G. stellnta, in fact, all of the species occurring in 
tlie avifauna of this country. 
1 have, in the present paper, figured only those of the Black-throated 
Loon (G. arctica), and the Red-throated species (G. stcllata), for the reason 
(hat, in as much as all the eggs of the different species of our loons so closely 
resemble each other, 1 thought it more important to invite attention to varia- 
lions in form, color and markings in the eggs of one or two species selected 
from series. This has been successfully accomplished in figures 53 and 54 (nos. 
14-19), where the examples shown are all of natural size. 
Almost without exception, the loon lays two eggs to the clutch and the 
markings in the case of Gavia immer are never, in so far as I have examined 
them, most numerous at the larger end. Audubon, in his account of the “Great 
Northern Diver’’ (Common Loon), says: “Of the many nests which I have ex- 
amined, T have found more containing three than two eggs, and I am confi- 
