106 STUBBS: A BLUE EGG OF THE LAPWING.
and, in this case, the shell tends towards brown rather than
green. Where the oorhodeine is missing, the egg is of a clear
blue. Blue Nightingale eggs are well known, although rare,
and, where Pheasants are bred on a large scale, it is easy to see
every variation from pale blue to dark greenish-brown.
It is clear that the absence of oorhodeine in the eggs of such
birds as the Lapwing, which nest in the open, must be a dangerous
abnormality; and perhaps the specimen now exhibited may
be of interest to those members who have studied the evolution
of protective colouring in nature.
This variety appears to be rare, and I have not heard of a
full clutch of blue Lapwing's eggs being found. Probably
abnormal eggs of this kind are usually destroyed by enemies
within a few hours of deposition, and their conspicuous
colouration would thus tend to the final extermination of a race
or species addicted to the production of eggs not provided with
oorhodeine.
[A Lapwing's nest containing two normal eggs and one white
egg, "speckled with small black spots," is figured in Country
Life, 28th April 1916. It is noted that "the glaring white
egg" was soon discovered and eaten by rooks.—Ed.].
A Rare Beetle in Epping Forest.—On the occasion of the
Essex Field Club's Cryptogamic Foray in the Forest on the 13th
November 1915, I took the opportunity of searching for beetles
and other insects on the old logs and tree-stumps met with by
the way. My efforts were rewarded by the capture of a speci-
men of Megacronus inclinans, one of the Staphylinid family of
beetles. This species has been recorded from the Forest on
three or four previous occasions. It seems to have occurred
in Britain only occasionally, usually in widely-separated
localities, and then as single specimens mostly. Canon Fowler,
in his British Coleoptera, describes it as "rare," and the pub-
lished records are usually similarly worded. The species is
characterised by the thorax, as well as the elytra, being red;
whereas the latter only are red in the other species of the genus,
the thorax being black. The beetles of the allied genera
Bryoporus and Bolitobius are attached to fungi, and it is probable
that Megacronus has similar tastes.—C. Nicholson, F.E.S.,
Hale End, Chingford.