212 THE CONDOR Vol. XIV very thickly, and quite nniformly,. speckled all over xvith more or less minute specks of dark brown. Number 4, collected by H. R. Caldwell (9?.3?o) the locality being unrecord- ed (Coll. U.S. Nat. Mus., no. 324o7) measures 63x48.' It is of a pale buffy- brown or pale care au lait color, quite 'thickly speckled all over with fine dots and specks of light brown. Some few of the specks are of noticeably larger size, and these are confined to the middle or apical thi'rds. Speckling of the butt or b;.g end, extremely fine, and the specks of lighter color. These eggs were selex;?ed by Dr. Richmond on the ?6th of April, ?9?2, and photographed by me four days thereafter. Referring to the Wild Turkey (M. g. silvestris), Bendire says (loc. cit., p. ? ?6): "In shape, the ?ggs of the:.?/Vild Turkey are usually ovate, occasionally they are elongate ovate. ?[he ground color ya.rie? from pale creamy white to creamy buff. They are more or less heavily m.a?ked with well-defined spots and do. ts of pale chocolate and reddish brown. In an 'occasional set these spots are pale lav- ender. Generally the markings are all small, ranging in size from a no. 6 shot to that of dust shot, but an exceptional set is sometimes heavily covered with both spots and blotches of ?he size'of buckshot, and even larger. The majority of eggs of this species in the U.S. National Musetim collection, and such as I have ex- amined elsewhere, resemble in coloration the figured type of M. gallopa,,o mexi- canzts, but average, as a rule, somewhat smaller in size." "The average measurement of thi[ty-eight eggs in the U.S. National Mu- seum collection is 6I. 5 by 46-5 millimeters. The largest eggs measure 68. 5 by 46, the smallest 59 by 45 millimeters." At the close of his accotint of M. g. mexicanus, Bendire states that "The only eggs of this species in the U.S. National Museum collection, about whose iden- tity there can be no possible doubt, were collected on Upper Lynx Creek, Arizona, in the spring of I87o, by Dr. E. Palmer, whose ha'me is well known as one of the pioneer naturalists of that Territory." ' "The eggs are ovate in shape, their ground color is creamy white, and they are profusely dotted with fine spots of reddish brown, pretty evenly distributed over the entire egg. The average measurements of these eggs is 69 by 49 milli- meters. The largest measures 70.5 by 49, the smallest 67 by 48 millimeters." "The type specimen (no. ?5573, U.S. National Museum collection, pl. 3, fig. ?5) is one of the set referred to above" (loc. ciL, p. xx9)- This set of three eggs I have personally studied. They are of M. g. mer- rictmi, and I find them to agree exactly with Captain Bendire's description just quoted.* In the Ralph Collect'ion(U..S. Nat.-Mus.. no. 27g32? orig. rm. ?%) I ex- amined six eggs of 'M. g. intermedia. They are of a pale ground color, all being uniformly speckled over with minute dots of lightish brown. These eggs are rath- er large for turkey eggs. They were collected at Brownsville, Texas, May 26, ? 894. Another set of M. g. intermedia collected by F. B. Armstrong (no. 25765, Coll. U.S. Nat. Mus.) are practically unspotted, and such spots as are to be found, are very faint, both the minute and the somewhat large ones. In Dr. Ralph's collection (U. S. Nat. Mus. no. 27080 ) eggs of M. g. inter- media are short, with the large and fine dots of a pale orange yellow. I examined
- Some of the English books contain qescriptions of the eggs of our wild turkeys, as for example "A
Haudbook to the Game-birds," by W. R. Ogilvie-Grant. (Lloyd's Nat. Hist. London, 1897. p?. 103-111.) .
