NUTCRACKER. 335 



of March, each with four eggs, and in Bornholm the young 

 have been taken on 9th Aprih Yet one instance is on record 

 of eggs being unhatched on the 17th of that month. LocaHty 

 seems hardly to affect the time of breeding, and the period 

 of incubation, which is said to be performed by the hen- 

 bird only, has been surmised to be from seventeen to 

 nineteen days. 



Many nests of the Nutcracker have now been described, 

 but there seems to be no essential difference in their con- 

 struction. One in the Editor's possession is five or six 

 inches in thickness with an outside diameter of about a 

 foot and six inches across the interior. It is composed 

 outwardly of sticks and twigs of larch, spruce and birch, 

 all, as the swollen state of their buds shews, freshly 

 plucked, as is also the grass with which it is thickly lined. 

 A few bits of moss and lichen are present, but they seem 

 rather to have adhered to the other materials than to have 

 been intentionally added. In some nests a considerable 

 quantity of earth or rotten wood underlies the lining, which 

 occasionally consists of hair-like lichen. The eggs, generally 

 four but not unfrequently five in number, are white, slightly 

 tinged with bluish-green, sometimes nearly spotless but 

 usually sparsely freckled with pale olive- or ash-colour, 

 though occasionally these markings are numerous and 

 pretty evenly distributed over the whole surface. In size 

 they measure from 1'38 to 1-26 by from '97 to "93 in.* 



Taking in order the European countries in which the 

 Nutcracker is known to be indigenous we may begin with 

 Norway, though here details are meagre. Herr Collett says 

 (Norges Fugle, p. 28), on the authority of Pastor Schllbeler 

 that it bred several times between 1840 and 1848 near 

 Porsgrund, and according to Dr. Printz that a nest was 

 found in 1854 at Land on the Ptands Fjord — but no 



* The caution of the late Mr. Hewitson in refusing to figui-e supposed eggs of 

 this bird has been amply justified by the fact that those ofl'ered to him, as 

 shewn by the description given of them, clearly belonged to some other species. 

 The first representation of a true Nutcracker's egg seems to be that by Btedeker 

 (Journ. fiir Orn. 1856, Taf. i. fig. 1), but it is not good. The only trustworthy 

 figure published in England is Mr. Smit's (P. Z. S. 1867, pi. xv. fig. 2). 

 VOL. II. X X 



