334 CORVID^. 



need here to note the statement (since it found a place in 

 former editions of this work, and has been repeated by 

 compilers who have thence drawn their sole information) 

 that it nested in holes of trees, which like. Woodpeckers 

 it excavated or enlarged for its purpose. That such a site 

 may yet be found cannot be denied, but hitherto all the 

 Nutcrackers' nests, which the zeal and care of ornithological 

 explorers (now not a few in number) have discovered, were 

 placed on the boughs of trees, at a height of about twenty 

 feet from the ground. It is possible that in some cases 

 the birds themselves had not built the whole fabric, but 

 had availed themselves of an older structure which they 

 had repaired and adapted to their own use. It is now 

 admitted that Thienemann was the first to obtain a nest 

 of this species, bat the year in which he did so is not 

 known, and that the late Abbe Cairo in 1846 was the first 

 to procure its eggs, though no record of either fact was 

 published till long after. Even then so great was the 

 prevalent uncertainty that grave doubts continued to be 

 expressed by the best-informed ornithologists.* The chief 

 reason why the nest and eggs of the Nutcracker remained 

 so long unknown seems to be that, noisy and obtrusive as 

 it is for a great part of the year, it becomes, like the Jay, 

 silent and beyond measure shy as the pairing-season 

 approaches. In very early spring, ere the snow has fallen 

 from the trees or melted on the ground, and the forests it 

 frequents are yet difficult of access, it begins to prepare its 

 nest, and its full complement of eggs is laid, and the young 

 are often hatched, amid all the rigours of winter. In 

 Switzerland four nests have been found on the same 10th 



" As regards our countrymen these doubts only began to be dispelled in 1862, 

 when a Nutcracker's nest and fledgeling, obtained in Bornholm by HH. Erichsen, 

 Fischer and Theobald, of Copenhagen, were exhibited at a meeting of the Zoo- 

 logical Society (P. Z. S. 1862, p. 206). In the following year the gentlemen 

 just named found in the same wood, and the produce it would seem of the same 

 parents, a nest with newly-hatched young, and in 1864, three nests with eggs, 

 one set of which they with the greatest liberality transmitted, as they had the 

 first nest and one of its tenants, to the Editor {op. cit. 1867, p. 162). In 1862 

 also the discovery of Herr Schiitt, of which more i^resently, was made known to 

 English readers (Ibis, 1862, p. 365). 



