— 16 * 
one and one-half to two feet* Some had eggs* while in others the downy 
o hi dies had hatched and ran about peeping as we walked among them* Our 
visits to these were made when the sun was low* as otherwise the young 
die quickly from the intense heat when deprived of the shelter of their 
parents' wings* She eggs of these terns* one to a nest* laid in a bed 
of sand without nest lining* were wonderful in their variety of marking* 
as they varied from white to reddish brown in ground odlor, and from 
nearly plain to a surface boldly marked with splashes and blotohes of 
dark brown or blackish. No two seemed alike and one might suppose 
that their great disslmiarlity was an aid to the mother in pioking her 
own nest from the multitude that surrounled it* By transferring eggs 
in adjoining nests it was easy* however* to demonstrate that a M b«ap u 
-i 
of locality brought the parent to her home as a tern that had hovered 
a dark egg covered one that was nearly white, with apparent lndifferenoe 
to color* though its rightful egg lay in another nest a few inches away* 
During the fierce heat of midday the terns bofore Returning to their 
homes wet their breast feathers in the lagoon and thus moistened the egg 
shell* a provision of instinct that reduced a temperature dangerous to the 
developing embryo(derived from the si 
Strange and wonderfully oolored fishes came to our nests and were 
duly deposited in tanks of alodhol. She oolleotion of marine shells also 
prospered* Some* particularly oertaln species of oone-shells* came out 
racks in the sand. 
only at night and were trailed by their traoks 
a. 
revealed by a 
water glass illuminated by an eleotric torch* The attraction of these 
I 
