The Eggs of the Knot ( Trtnga canutus') found at last! — No fact is 
more generally recognized among ornithologists than the different de- 
grees of distinction, so to speak, attaching to the discovery of the eggs 
of different birds. The nests of some species have been found early, or 
by accident; others before their absence from collections has excited 
much notice ; while others still have long been the object of special and 
diligent search, and the failure to find them has been commented upon 
by many distinguished writers. Of this latter category no more marked 
example can be found than the Knot. {Trtnga canutus L.). Seebohm, 
in his entertaining ‘Siberia in Europe,’ tells us that when he and Harvie- 
Brown , started for the Petchora, the birds “to the discovery of whose 
eggs special interest seemed to attach, were the Grey Plover, the Little 
Stint, the Sanderling, the Curlew Sandpiper, the Knot, and Bewick’s 
Swan.”* And in a foot note he adds : “The Knot ( Tringa canutus , Linn.) 
was the only one of these six species of birds which we did not meet 
with in the valley of the Petchora. It probably breeds on the shores of 
the Polar basin in both hemispheres, but its eggs are absolutely un- 
known.” 
Major Henry W. Feilden, naturalist to the Nares Arctic Expedition of 
1875-76, says: “I was not so fortunate as to obtain the eggs of the Knot 
during our stay in the Polar regions, though it breeds in some numbers 
along the shores of Smith Sound and the north coast of Grinnell Land. 
. . . . During the month of July my companions and I often endeavored to 
discover the nest of this bird ; but none of us were successful. How- 
ever, on July 30, 1876, the day before we broke out of our winter-quarters, 
where we had been, frozen in eleven months, three of our seamen, walk- 
ing by the border of a small lake, not far from the ship, came upon an 
old bird accompanied by three nestlings, which they brought to me.”f 
These young I have seen in the British Museum at South Kensington, 
where, in company with a pair of the old birds, they constitute one of 
the most attractive of the many ‘natural groups’ which adorn Mr. Sharpe’s 
department. 
Lieut. A. W. Greely, U. S. A., Commander of the late Expedition to 
Lady Franklin Sound, succeeded in obtaining the long-sought-for egg of 
this species; and has had the extreme kindness to ask me to publish the 
first account of it. 
Lieut. Greely writes me: “The specimen of bird and egg were ob- 
tained in the vicinity of Fort Conger, latitude 8i° 44' N. The egg was 
1. 10 inch [28 mm.] in the longer axis, and 1 inch [25.40 mm.] in the 
shorter. Color, light pea green, closely spotted with brown in small 
specks about the size of a pin-head.”— C. Hart Merriam, Locust Grove, 
N. r. 
Auk, 2, July, 1886. p. J /Z -3/3 
* Siberia in Europe. By Henry Seebohm, London, 1880, p. 2. 
t Narrative of a voyage to the Polar Sea. By Capt. Sir G. S. Nares, London, Vol. 
II, 1878, pp. 211-212. 
1002. Discovery of the Eggs of the Knot , Tringa canutus. — By J. E- 
Harting. Ibid., Sept. 1885, P- 344 -— Referring to Dr. C. Hart Merriam’s 
record in ‘The Auk’ (II, p. 312), and stating that “Sabine found the 
Knot breeding in abundance on Melville Island” in 1820, and that “Capt. 
Lyons found it breeding near Quilliam Creek, Melville Peninsula,” in 
1823. Reference is also made to Sir John Richardson’s reporting “the 
Knot as breeding in Hudson’s Bay, and down to the 55th Parallel,” etc. 
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