474 NUCIFRAGA CARYOCATACTES. 



Society on the lOth December, 1861, and mentioned in that Society's ' Pro- 

 ceedings ' (18G1, pp. 396, 397) as having been received not long before from 

 Dr. Baldamus, who entered it in the list of those which he was sending me as 

 " Nv,cifraya caryocatacf.es aus den Transsylvanischen Gebirgen (Siid-Carpathen) 

 durch H. von Bielz erhalten." At that time I was inclined to attach less 

 value to it than to the others ^ which I then produced ; but I afterwards 

 found that it absolutely agrees in appearance with, and cannot be distinguished 

 from, some of the thoroughly-authenticated specimens presently to be men- 

 tioned, notwithstanding that Baron Richard Kcinig-Warthausen (Journ. fiir 

 Orn. 1861, p. 37) and the Ritter Victor von Tschusi-Schmidhofen (Der 

 Tannenheher, u. s. w. Dresden : [1873] p. 11, note 2) declared against it, each 

 of them having apparently had this very specimen twice under his eyes, since 

 it seems to be that one of the three seen by Dr. Baldamus at Pesth in 1847, 

 and there obtained by him as he has stated (Naumannia, 1851, ii. p. 71), 

 " nicht ohne grosse Opfer ;" for he himself has inscribed it " Mont. Transsylv. 

 4, 1847" (meaning that it was taken in those mountains in April, 1847). 

 There is no need to repeat here the rest of his published statement, but I 

 translate a passage from his letter to me of 20th April, 1861, respecting the 

 two eggs '" he was sending to me : — " I hold the example from the Basses 

 Alpes to be much more authentic than that from Transsylvania, though I 

 certainly saw from thence a nest and a second eg^ ^ in the Museum of Pesth 

 [in 1847]. For the authenticity of these last speaks [the fact] that the finder, 

 Jurat von Bielz, did not realize the rarity of his find, and that by far the 

 greater number of eggs collected by him were rightly determined. For the 

 correctness of the Caive specimen [§ 2593^, however, surety is given by the 

 knowledge and proved honour of the man." I hold the judgment of the 

 Baron Konig-Warthausen and the Ritter von Tschusi-Schmidhofen in very 

 high respect, and in all that concerns this species the able paper of the former 

 and the careful monograph of the latter make them especially authoritative ; 

 but it must be borne in mind that the Baron's paper was written when very 

 great unceilainty existed as to what eggs of the Nutcracker were like, and that 

 this specimen, vouchsafed by Dr. Baldamus's inscription, has no similarity to 

 any Jay's that 1 ever saw, while its resemblance to well-determined eggs of 

 the Nutcracker is perfect. The memory of the Doctor, however, was clearly 

 at fault when he wrote to me that the Jurat found this egg himself, since the 

 latter informed the Hitter {loc. cit.) that it was obtained for him by a young 

 man. Moreover, it is evident that even nine years later Herr von Bielz did 

 not know the Nutcracker's eg^a or mode of nesting, since he states in his 

 * Faima der Wirbelthiere Siebenbiirgens ' (Hermannstadt : 1856, p. 94) of this 

 species: "Nest in hohlen Biiumen mit 6 bis 6 gelbegrauen, braungefleckten 

 Eieni." He therefore well exposes himself to the unfavourable remarks of 

 both his critics ; but the whole matter is puzzling, as I do not like to suppose 

 that the Doctor wrote upon the wrong egg.] 



^ Two of these, obtained from Mr. Wheelwright, in which I was then disposed 

 to bt^lieve, appear to have been those of Perisoreus infausttis. Certainly they were 

 not Nutcrackers'. 



•^ The second being that of which an account immediately follows. 



' In his paper in ' Naumannia ' (ut srqjra) he said there were in all three eggs. 



