H. SEEBOHM-NESTS AND EGGS OF BIEDS. 
257 
most remarkable thing about them is the variety and brilliancy of 
their eggs; the eggs are unusually large, being about the size of a 
goose-egg, and they are singularly beautiful both in colour and in 
the arrangement of pattern. Each bird lays but one egg, and she 
is, in fact, unable to sit upon more. 
Now we have just said, when referring to birds which rely for 
the safety of their eggs on the concealed position of their nests, that 
Nature had taken no trouble whatever about protective colour, and 
that the eggs were white. In the case of the guillemot the 
position is exactly reversed; their eggs are laid upon a perfectly 
white surface of rock, and one would naturally expect that they too 
would have been white; but the guillemot being a powerful bird, 
and its immense numbers enabling it to drive away any hawk that 
might come to prey upon its eggs, no necessity exists for protective 
colouring, and Nature appears to have rushed into the opposite 
extreme, as if to show what wonderful variety of colour and 
pattern she could produce. It is possible to suggest a further ex¬ 
planation. During the time of incubation guillemots congregate 
in immense masses on the top of the rocks; supposing that all 
their eggs were exactly alike, it would be almost impossible for 
each bird to distinguish her own, and the rocks would be a constant 
scene of fighting and squabbling, but being of different colours the 
bird with a green egg (for instance) is able at once to pounce upon 
it, and the bird with a white egg is able to find her own. 
Passing away from the colony of guillemots, we find, in the rocks 
opposite, little gorges running into the mainland, and on narrow 
ledges on the sides of these gorges the kittiwake gull builds her 
nest and rears her young. The eggs are conspicuous and differ 
much in their colour and markings, but the nests are so inaccessible 
that most of the eggs are successfully reared. 
We proceed onwards ; on a neighbouring island the land slopes 
gradually almost to the level of the sea, and is covered with small 
marine vegetation of various kinds. It is about half a mile long, 
and is one vast colony of herring-gulls and of the lesser black- 
backed gull. The scene as you approach is one of great beauty; 
you may perhaps see as many as 10,000 gulls, with snow-white 
breasts, standing head to wind, like so many weather-cocks, while 
thousands of others are flying around you on every side. Peyond 
the island is a stretch of shingle, by following which you approach 
a large sand-bank. The sand is the colour of ordinary grey sand, 
without a bit of vegetation on it, but interspersed with small black 
and white stones, which give to it rather a rich appearance. In one 
portion of the sand-bank the gravel is larger than elsewhere, and 
this spot supplies a home to a colony of sandwich-terns. I 
believe that I am correct in saying that it is impossible to cross 
this sand without treading upon terns’ eggs. The colour of the 
eggs exactly resembles the colour of the sand and gravel on which 
they are deposited, and, unless the greatest possible care is taken, 
you are perfectly certain to crush some of them. The sandwich- 
tern affords a very striking example of the class of birds which 
