. The bird, its form and function . tect—two eggs, theirshells imbued with the colours of the forest floor. I haveled persons to a spot on a beach of shells and sand,told them that there were twenty-one good-sized eggswithin a radius of fifteen feet, and seen them utterly olive-gray, blotched shell of a terns egg rests amongdark pebbles, or more often upon a wisp of seaweed, intowhose irregularities the hues of the eggs melt and mingleperfectly. The Black Skimmer, that most interestingbird of our coast, lays its eggs upon the bare sand among,or sometimes in, the large clam-shells w
. The bird, its form and function . tect—two eggs, theirshells imbued with the colours of the forest floor. I haveled persons to a spot on a beach of shells and sand,told them that there were twenty-one good-sized eggswithin a radius of fifteen feet, and seen them utterly olive-gray, blotched shell of a terns egg rests amongdark pebbles, or more often upon a wisp of seaweed, intowhose irregularities the hues of the eggs melt and mingleperfectly. The Black Skimmer, that most interestingbird of our coast, lays its eggs upon the bare sand among,or sometimes in, the large clam-shells which the storms throwup in windrows. Against mans systematic search theirwonderful assimilative colouring is of course often useless, The Eggs of Birds 455 but sharp as is the eye of passing crow or beach-patrollingbear, the eggs to them would appear but bits of sand andshadow. And thus we might go on with many other examplesof protection derived from the pigment on the shells—protection which in a hundred instances might prove. Fig. 360,—Eggs of Night-hawk. futile, but which in the great summing up and balancingof Natures profit and* loss is of inestimable value to therace. We find an unusual condition in the colouring of theeggs of sea-birds,—of certain of those species which neston inaccessible cliffs. If pigment was developed in the 456 The Bird eggs of the ancestors of these birds for the sake of protec-tion, all need for it is now lacking, and as an apparentresult the various hues seem to have run riot. One mayplace a hundred murres eggs side by side and find no twoalike, while the extremes would never be recognized asbelonging to the same species of bird.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1906
