ADDITIONAL CUCKOO NOTES. 277 



the notes of this species. If any other cuokoos and especially 

 micropterus occurred, I should surely have heard them. I have been 

 pretty well all over this hill, and you know how plainly and how far 

 one can hear in these deep still valleys. I had my suspicion, there- 

 fore, that canorus was the layer of the blue egg (the bird being so 

 very common here). All this time I was endeavouring to solve the 

 enigma by shooting a female and examining the oviduct egg ; but 

 although I could have shot plenty of males, I found the ladies 

 exceedingly difficult of approach. Luckily I happened to stumble 

 on a favourite cuckoo feeding ground in a patch of dock weeds full 

 of hairy caterpillars. Here, on the morning of June 15th last, I 

 took my stand with my gun, but without success. However, visiting 

 the place again in the evening I was more successful, and, out of 4 

 cuckoos feeding and flying about there, managed to select and knock 

 over the female, the skin of which I now send you, and from the 

 oviduct of which I took the fragments of blue eggshell also sent. I 

 hope there is no mistake about my identification. I do not think 

 there is. 



" The egg was unfortunately broken, either in the fall when shot, 

 or possibly by my injudicious handling in order to put the poor bird, 

 which was only winged, out of its misery. This example was shot 

 within 300 yards of the nest of L. brunnea, from which the blue egg 

 was taken, and in my own mind I have little doubt that this is an 

 egg of canorus. I am also of opinion, perhaps a rash one, that canorus 

 lays mostly blue eggs on this hill." 



It is very curious, that prior to receiving this letter, which most 

 effectually disposed of all my previous doubts as to the Common 

 Cuckoo laying blue eggs, I had myself found three blue cuckoo's 

 eggs, which had made me feel that I had been much too emphatic in 

 my assertions on this point. 



Three blue eggs taken by me this year, two in the nests of Liothrix 

 luteaand one in that of Mesia argentauris, were found at an altitude of 

 5,000 feet, at which, in the Shillong Hills, only two cuckoos breed : 

 namely canorus and saturatus. As my eggs could not have been those 

 of saturatus, they were bound to be those of the Common Cuckoo, 

 and I was just about to climb down gracefully from my pedestal of 

 "no blue canorus • eggs " when Major Magrath's letters came and 

 hurled me headlong from it. 



