388 Mr. J. H. Gurney on the 



are well known to the peasants, who accuse it, with justice, 

 of eating eggs, for a well-known naturalist at Lyons shot a 

 female which had swallowed an egg of Emberiza miliaria, 

 and the fact has been proved beyond doubt in England. 

 Crespon tells his readers that Cuckoos are so thin on their 

 arrival in spring that " maigre comme uu coucou" has passed 

 into a proverb ; it cannot be exhaustion from migration which 

 reduces them, for the muscles of birds are supposed to be de- 

 veloped for migration; but no one has fathomed the mysteries 

 of this anomalous bird. Young Cuckoos present a kind of 

 dimorphism, for though generally of a dark slate-colour, they 

 are sometimes rufous, and no doubt it is the latter which 

 eventually become hepatic forms ; these hepatic birds are 

 not at all uncommon on the Continent, and I once obtained 

 a Cuckoo half normal and half hepatic, which was a very 

 singular bird {cf. Norwich Naturalists^ Trans, vi. p. 383). 



Scops Eared Owl. Scops giu. 



Local name " Machorta.'^ The noise which goes on in 

 the cork-woods of Provence on a hot spring night (April 12- 

 May 12) from the combined melody of Scops Owls, 

 Nightingales, and Frogs Avould hardly be credited, and is 

 equal to anything on the Norfolk Broads. The chief offenders 

 are the Scops Owls, which keep perpetually reiterating 

 "scho-u, selio-u,^^ beginning this music at 7 p.m. and going 

 on with it all night long, which is anything but conducive to 

 slumber for persons of weak nerves. Sometimes the sound 

 is uttered on the wing, sometimes when perched, but always 

 with the same cadence without any variation, at intervals of 

 thirty seconds, given with the regularity of a clock : really 

 the monotony of a Cuckoo is nothing to it ! Two or three 

 times the "love-song,^' if such it be, surprised us by 

 beginning at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and once at half- 

 past one the irrepressible Owl was already tuning up. To 

 what purpose can all this noise be? for it must serve some- 

 thing in the economy of nature. 



As there are not many holes at Valescure, the timber 

 being for the most part small, these Owls generally lay their 



