124 On certain Peculiarities in the 
Feeling keenly, as I do, the startling nature of this bold statement, 
and the scepticism it is likely to call forth, I will not linger over 
it with any comments of my own, but proceed at once to give a 
short resumé of the article in question. 
Dr. Baldamus begins his paper by calling attention to the great 
variety in colouring as well as in marking in a collection of Cuckoo’s 
eggs, and the astonishing resemblance these eggs severally bear to 
the eggs of a variety of small birds usually chosen as the foster 
parents of Cuckoos: a fact which he says was well known to the 
great ornithologists and oologists of Germany, including Naumann, 
Thiénemann, Brehm, Gloger, von Homeyer and others, and I may 
add that this point was equally well known to our British orni- 
thologists as well.1_ But Dr. Baldamus seems to have been the first 
to suspect that at the root of this striking phenomenon there was 
a fixed law, perhaps a law which might be discoverable: and his 
suspicions in this direction having been aroused, he proceeded to 
pay diligent attention to the subject. To this end he not only 
made most careful personal observations, but by means of oological 
correspondents in various parts of Germany, collected a large series 
of facts bearing upon the matter, which were convincing to his 
own mind: convictions which seem to have been shared in by 
many of the leading ornithologists of Germany. I will not 
weary the patience of members of this Society by taking them 
through the several instances which Dr. Baldamus details; but 
pass on at once to the results he arrived at, merely remarking by 
the way, that he followed up his investigations with such earnest 
zeal, that when he wrote his paper, he had before him no less than 
one hundred Cuckoo’s eggs, special care being taken to ascertain 
accurately from the nest of what particular species every one of 
these eggs was taken. 
Now the first thing which Dr. Baldamus established to his own 
satisfaction, by means of these repeated observations, was, that the 
Cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of no less than thirty-seven species, 
including not only every species of Chat, Warbler, Wagtail, Pipit, 
and Lark, but even exceptionally certain of the grain-eating 
1 Wood’s Illustrated Natural History, vol. ii., p. 572, 

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