NL'CIFllAGA CARYOCATACTES. 475 



[^2593. O/ze.—" Basses Alpes, 2 1 April, 1858." From the 

 Abbe Caire of Sanieres, through Dr. Baldamus, 1861. 



This is another of the eggs exhibited by nie ou the occasion just mentioned 

 (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1861, pp. 396, 397), and that on which Dr. Baldamus set the 

 most value, as above stated. Notwithstanding this, and its bearing a label 

 " Casse-noix " in, as I believe, the handwriting of the Abbe, from whom the 

 Doctor received it direct, as he did other specimens, I have long had great 

 doubts as to admitting it ; for it is indistinguishable from one variety of the 

 eggs of Corvus monechda, and is very unlike what I consider to be the ordinary 

 eggs oi Nucifraf/n, having no trace of their characteristic bluish-green ground- 

 colour. Indeed I had resolved to omit it from this catalogue until I observed 

 that in the new edition of Naumann's great work (Naturgeschichte der Vogel 

 Mitteleuropas, iv. pi. 48), where six specimens are figured, two of them 

 (tigs. 5, 6) seem to lead, as it were, to the present specimen. Unfortunately, 

 it is not stated in the accompanying text where these eggs were obtained, 

 thougli no doubt the editor and draughtsman were assured of their authenticity. 

 Knowing also how much eggs of the Corvidcs will occasionally vary, I feel I 

 should no longer be justified in suspecting the Doctor or the Ahh6 of a mistake, 

 and I have the greater pleasure in including the present specimen, seeing that, 

 according to the former, the latter was the first discoverer of the tig)^ of this 

 species, in the year 1846, near Sanieres, in the Department of the Lower Alps, 

 and subsequently sent several eggs to the Doctor, one of them being that 

 figured by Herr F. W. B;ideker in the ' Journal fiir Ornithologie ' for 1856 (pi. i. 

 fig. 1, p. 32) and in 1861 in his better-known namesake's work (Lieferung 7).] 



[\ 2594. Four. — Almindingen, Bornhohn, 23 March, 1864. 

 From Hli. H. C. Erichsen, J. C. H. Fischer, and P. W. 

 Theobald. 



Proc. Zool. Soc. 1867, pi. xv. fig. 2. 



In 1862 Ilerrer Kammerraad Erichsen, J. C. H. Fischer, and Pastor Theo- 

 bald, three very keen oologists, whose acquaintance I had made (thanks to 

 Mr. Wolley) at Copenhagen in 1859, were good enough to send me one of two 

 nests, and the skin of a fully-fledged young bird, of this species, which they 

 had procured on the 22nd and 23rd of May in a forest on the island of 

 Bornholm, where they had previously been assured by a forester, Herr Rosen, 

 that it yearly bred. These interesting examples \ certainly the first of their 

 kind ever seen in England, I lost no time in exhibitins' at a meeting of the 

 Zoological Society on the 24th of June in that year, giving an account of the 

 circumstances in which they were obtained, as furnished to me by the Pastor 

 (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1862, pp. 206-208), whose hopes, as well as my own, of soon 

 possessing indubitable Nutcrackers' eggs were thereby much raised. In 1863 

 HH. Erichsen and Theobald returned to Bornholm, and accompanied by two 



^ Now in the Museum of the University of Cambridge. 



