. The oist . a lace-like deposit of limysubstance. The eggs shown in are also from Mr. Courts and werephotographed by me along with manyothers, which I propose to publish invarious connections. In going over birds eggs, however, Ido meet with some which have theexact form of eggs laid by certain rep-tiles, as for example the globular eggsof certain owls, which bear a close re-semblance to the eggs of marine tur-tles. Moreover, they are both white,the chief difference being that theshell of the turtle is leathery and flex-ible, while that of the egg of the owlis brittle and more or les
. The oist . a lace-like deposit of limysubstance. The eggs shown in are also from Mr. Courts and werephotographed by me along with manyothers, which I propose to publish invarious connections. In going over birds eggs, however, Ido meet with some which have theexact form of eggs laid by certain rep-tiles, as for example the globular eggsof certain owls, which bear a close re-semblance to the eggs of marine tur-tles. Moreover, they are both white,the chief difference being that theshell of the turtle is leathery and flex-ible, while that of the egg of the owlis brittle and more or less chalky, asin the case of the eggs of other birds. Mr. Court at one time had the eggof a Barred Owl (Strix varia) in hiscollection, which lacked but very littleof being a perfect sphere. This eggI published a figure of in The Emu awhile ago, which is the official organof the Royal Australiasian Ornitholo-gists Union of Melbourne, was of natural size and a very beau-tiful object. THE OOIiOOIST 87. THE OOLOGIST It is most interesting that in formand color tlie eggs of liumming-birds(Trocliili) very closely resemble thoseof certain small reptiles, and examplesof these are given in Figure 11 of thepresent article. The reptile eggs havebeen kept in alcohol, and show updark in consequence. They also ex-hibit some pitting due to handling,which is unavoidable. When firstlaid, however, they look, in somecases, almost exactly like the eggs is a very inter-esting fact, when we take into consid-eration the relationship of the twogroups. Figure 11 is also reproduced from aphotograph of mine, the eggs of thehummers belonging to Mr. Court;while I am greatly indebted to Stejneger, and his assistant,Mr. Paine, for having selected for methe reptile eggs and for the loan ofthem from the collection of the Divi-sion of Reptiles of the U. S. NationalMuseum. The figures of them showwell the relative! size of the eggs ofthe species figured, as well as the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookidoist33al, booksubjectbirds
