THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 103 



conclusion I drew was, that the bird had carried the egg about for 

 a considerable time, and, being unable to find a suitable nest, had 

 simply swallowed it." 



By permission I quote the following notes from the diary of the 

 Rev. H. T. Hull, Tasmania : — 



" 6th October, 1877. — Found nest of Acanthiza dicmenensis, 

 with egg of Gacomantis fiabelliformis. The three eggs of 

 Acanthiza were all dented, as if the larger egg had been roughly 

 deposited on the top of them." 



"15th November. — Found nest of Acanthiza diemenensis, two 

 eggs broken, with young far advanced, but dead ; fresh egg of 

 cuckoo, flabelliformis." 



During my own visit to Tasmania, October, 1883, the over- 

 seer at Ridgeside brought under my notice a nest of the Tas- 

 manian Tit, Acanthiza, in a gorse hedge, from which he had 

 just abstracted the egg of the Fantailed Cuckoo. The building of 

 the nest had apparently just been completed, and was used first 

 by the cuckoo. And, strange to relate, although the entrance of 

 the nest was enlarged by the overseer to abstract the cuckoo s 

 egg, the enlargement did not offend the little Tit, because three 

 days afterwards she laid her first egg, and my subsequent visits to 

 the nest proved that she finished her complement. 



Another note I made on the mainland during an excursion of 

 the Field Naturalists' Club reads thus : — " 15.10.92 — Wandong. — 

 Egg of Fantailed Cuckoo in Tit's, Acanthiza, nest with one egg 

 of the Tit. Eggs could be seen from outside. Evidently the en- 

 trance had been somewhat enlarged, possibly by the head of the 

 cuckoo when depositing the egg." 



Perhaps I should have placed a query against the Large-billed 

 Scrub-Tit, Sericornis, as a foster-parent of the Fantailed Cuckoo, 

 for, although the parasitical bird's eggs I found in the " Big 

 Scrub," Richmond River, New South Wales, resembled those 

 of the Fantailed Cuckoo, they were slightly different to those 

 taken from Acanthizas' nests in Victoria and Tasmania. 



The following letter appeared in the Victorian Naturalist, 

 December, 1891, above the name of C. French, jun. : — 



" A friend of mine living near Oakleigh informs me that one 

 day, when out collecting, he came across a nest of the White- 

 eared Honey-eater, P. leucotis, ready for eggs, and on visiting 

 the same nest the following day, it contained an egg of the Pallid 

 Cuckoo, C. pallidus, which he left, thinking the Honey-eater 

 would lay shortly ; but on his return the third day he found that 

 the egg of the Pallid Cuckoo had been thrown out of the nest 

 by the Fantailed Cuckoo, C. flabelliformis, and she had laid an 

 egg in the nest. The Honey-eater deserted the nest. This is 

 the second time my friend has noticed this same proceeding." 



This is an exceedingly interesting note, for rarely does the 



