XXX. 
THE NESTS AND EGGS OF BIBDS. 
By Henry Seebohm, E.L.S., F.Z.S. 
A Lecture delivered at Watford , Qtk January, 1885. 
(Abridged.) 
If any of yon should visit the new Natural History Museum at 
South Kensington, and should be admitted into the room where the 
skins of birds are kept, and if you should then watch the curator 
measuring the legs and toes, counting the tail-feathers, and engaged 
in other similar work, you would probably arrive at the conclusion 
that Ornithology was not an attractive pursuit. In this however 
you would be wrong ; the curator is really engaged in a great work : 
he is attempting to evolve order out of chaos. 
The classification of birds is a science yet in its infancy; we 
have not as yet discovered the lines upon which it will be eventu¬ 
ally drawn. The system I propose this evening to follow is a 
purely artificial one, depending on the relation of birds to their 
nests and eggs. 
I will first refer to a few of those birds which appear to rely 
for the safety of their eggs on the protective colour of the eggs. 
I shall ask you to take a trip with me (in imagination) to the 
grouse moors near Sheffield, the best district for birds-nesting 
that I know in England, and where a greater number of rare birds 
are found to breed than in any other place it has been my good 
fortune to visit. The moors are a stretch of rolling country, covered 
with heath, with a few streams and one or two rivers running 
through them, and scattered over with rocks. They are very 
strictly preserved by armies of game-keepers. To Englishmen the 
grouse is a peculiarly interesting bird, inasmuch as it is the only 
one that is found exclusively in the British Islands. You may see 
hundreds, I might almost say thousands of these birds breeding on 
the moors; they make a mere scratch of a nest on the heath, and 
their eggs are a rich russet-brown colour, sometimes almost shading 
into a brilliant sepia with a blueish or deep red cast upon it, the 
object evidently being to render the eggs as inconspicuous as 
possible by making them almost the same colour as the peat and 
lichen by which they are surrounded. 
Three species of hawks breed upon the moors; they are supposed 
to feed upon the young grouse, and the grand object of every 
game-keeper is to keep his moor free from hawks. The most in¬ 
teresting of these hawks is the merlin, a bird in which I have 
taken the greatest interest, on account of its peculiar habit of nesting. 
Eor many years I made an arrangement with a game-keeper to 
send me a post-card the moment he discovered a merlin’s nest upon 
the moor under his protection. On this moor there is a little bank 
covered with heath on which the merlin has for several years regu¬ 
larly nested, and yet there is nothing whatever about the spot that 
would lead you to suppose that it was specially adapted for the 
vol. in. —PART VII. 17 
