in Evropean Oology. 77 



doubt from the stain which is attached to the character of our 

 well-known species. Mr. Tristram, although inclining to the 

 belief that the C.glandarius rears its own young ones, acknow- 

 ledges that the eggs are so like those of a magpie of the country, 

 in the nest of which it lays them, that the eggs of the two birds 

 for a time passed his critical eye, and were labeled as those of 

 one and the same species. The eggs are certainly well-adapted 

 to represent those of a magpie, but are still more like those of 

 our own thrushes. That represented in fig. 2 is a facsimile of 

 the egg of the blackbird, both in size and colour. That in fig. 1, 

 except that it is larger, would pass for the egg of the ring-ouzel, 

 Mr. Tristram says, "In our expedition of the spring of 1857, 

 we were fortunate enough to pitch our tents, for upwards of 

 three weeks, in a valley between two of the southern spurs of 

 the Eastern Atlas range, which proved to be one of the very few 

 breeding localities of the Great Spotted Cuckoo as yet dis- 

 covered in North Africa. In the middle of May we had no- 

 ticed it several times, but could obtain no clue to its breedins:- 

 habits, until one day I had extended a long ride as far as a 

 French outpost, when an officer showed me a Cuckoo he had 

 jiist skinned, and gave me an egg he had taken from the ovary 

 ready for deposition. He told me that in a certain wood near 

 our camp he had in former years taken nests, and had never, 

 during a fifteen years' residence in Africa, observed the bird in 

 any other district, and that even here it seemed confined to 

 very narrow limits. Within a very few days after this a nest 

 rewarded our seai'ch, containing a single egg ready to hatch 

 (May 20th) : the nest was in the top of a tree in the forest. 

 After this we found several other nests. I am aware that 

 M. Brehm*, who has described the habits of this bird in Nubia, 

 attributes to it the same evasion of domestic duties of which our 

 C. canorus is guilty, and states that it makes use of the nests 

 of the Corvidee, whose eggs its own in some degree resemble as 

 to colouring. But, as far as my own observation goes, I cannot 

 concur in the accusation of its use of a foundling hospital, further 

 than that I believe it does appropriate and repair the deserted 



* See Cabanis' Journal fiir Ornithologie, 185.3, p. 144, and Zoolo- 

 gist, XX. 398/. 



