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STUBBS: A BLUE EGG OF THE LAPWING. 
and, in this case, the shell tends towards brown rather than 
green. Where the oorhodeine is missing, the egg is of a clear 
blue. Blue Nightingale eggs are well known, although rare, 
and, where Pheasants are bred on a large scale, it is easy to see 
every variation from pale blue to dark greenish-brown. 
It is clear that the absence of oorhodeine in the eggs of such 
Vv/ 
birds as the Lapwing, which nest in the open, must be a dangerous 
abnormality ; and perhaps the specimen now exhibited may 
be of interest to those members who have studied the evolution 
of protective colouring in nature. 
This variety appears to be rare, and I have not heard of a 
full clutch of blue Lapwing’s eggs being found. Probably 
abnormal eggs of this kind are usually destroyed by enemies 
within a few hours of deposition, and their conspicuous 
colouration would thus tend to the final extermination of a race 
or species addicted to the production of eggs not provided with 
oorhodeine. 
[A Lapwing’s nest containing two normal eggs and one white 
egg, “ speckled with small black spots,” is figured in Country 
Life, 28th April 1916. It is noted that ‘'the glaring white 
egg ” was soon discovered and eaten by rooks.—Ed.]. 
A Rare Beetle in Epping Forest. —On the occasion of the 
Essex Field Club’s Cryptogamic Foray in the Forest on the 13th 
November 1915, I took the opportunity of searching for beetles 
and other insects on the old logs and tree-stumps met with by 
the way. My efforts were rewarded by the capture of a speci¬ 
men of Megacronus inclinans, one of the Staphylinid family of 
beetles. This species has been recorded from the Forest on 
three or four previous occasions. It seems to have occurred 
in Britain only occasionally, usually in widely-separated 
localities, and then as single specimens mostly. Canon Fowler, 
in his British Coleoptera, describes it as “ rare,” and the pub¬ 
lished records are usually similarly worded. The species is 
characterised by the thorax, as well as the elytra, being red ; 
whereas the latter only are red in the other species of the genus, 
the thorax being black. The beetles of the allied genera 
Bryoporus and Boletobius are attached to fungi, and it is probable 
that Megacronus has similar tastes.—C. Nicholson, F.E.S., 
Hale End, Chingford. 
