NUTCRACKER. 337 



Tyrol Herr Franz obtained no less than five nests at 

 Schlanders in 1864. At Tiefenkasten in the Grisons in 

 1867, Dr. Baldainus himself found two nests with fledged 

 young and a single egg, and six more nests were taken 

 between 1868 and 1872 in the Jura of Soleure — five of 

 them by Herr G. Yogel of Zurich. To France however 

 belongs the merit of the earliest discovery of the eggs of 

 the Nutcracker, for it was near Sanieres in the department 

 of the Lower Alps that Caire, as before said, obtained 

 its eggs in 1846, and from him specimens reached Dr. 

 Baldainus in 1848, while others came later, through his 

 means, to Baedeker and several German oologists, as well 

 as one, taken in 1858, to the Editor. There is no 

 doubt that many other localities in Europe, from Russia 

 to Sardinia (where Lord Lilford received positive assurance 

 of its breeding) and possibly Spain — since it has been 

 obtained in Estremadura — serve the Nutcracker as nesting- 

 stations, but the evidence above adduced may here suffice, 

 and any that is less positive be omitted for the present. 



The young are fed partly on insects, which in summer and 

 autumn form with snails the chief diet of the adults also, 

 but, as winter comes on, the berries, nuts and seeds of forest- 

 trees become their staple sustenance, and whenever these 

 become scarce in the native haunts of the birds, they wander 

 far and wide in search of food, so that they occur irregularly 

 in most parts of the continent, though no examples have 

 yet been observed in Greece, Turkey or the Crimea. The 

 Nutcracker doubtless breeds in the forest- districts of Siberia, 

 for the young have been seen in the far east of that country. 

 It also occurs in Kamchatka, Northern China and Japan. 



The flight of this bird is commonly said to be laboured 

 and only unwillingly prolonged in the open, yet Dr. Radde 

 s that be has seen small flocks rising and circling 

 aloft till they were almost out of Bight, and then dropping 

 suddenly, one bird after another, to a tree-top, whence they 

 would, after a short time, renew their practice— much it 

 would seem after the manner in which Hooks perform their 

 strange aerial sports before described. Among trees the 



