646 NUN—NUTCRACKER 
NULLIPENNES, Lesson’s name in 1831 (Zr. @Orn. p. 11) for 
a group of birds to consist of the genus Apteryx (rw); but lately 
applied in error (Century Dictionary, sub voce) to the PENGUINS. 
NUN (printed “Non” in Merrett’s Pinaz, p. 183), the adult 
male SMEW, from his delicate white and black plumage, and also 
said to be a local name of the Blue Titmouse, Parus ceruleus, 
according to Charleton (Onomast. p. 90), from its banded head ; but 
the French Nonnetie and the German Nonnenmeise are names of the 
Marsh-Titmouse, P. palustris. 
NUTCRACKER, the name given in 1758 by Edwards (Glean- 
ings, i. p. 63, pl. 240) to a bird which had hitherto none in English, 
though described in 1544 by Turner, who, meeting with it in the 
Rhetic Alps, where it was called “Nousbrecher” (hodie “ Nuss- 
brecher ”), translated that word into Latin as Nucifraga. In 1555 
Gesner figured it and conferred upon it another designation, 
Caryocatactes. Willughby and Ray obtained it on the road from 
Vienna to Venice as they crossed what must have been the Sém- 
merring Pass, 26th September 1663; and it has a wide range in 
the northern parts of the Palearctic area, chiefly keeping to sub- 
alpine or subarctic pine-forests, and apparently nowhere numerous, 
though roving bands of seventy or one hundred have occasionally 
been observed in autumn, at which season it can be often seen in 
suitable localities in several European countries. It is the Corvus 
caryocatacies of Linneeus, the Nucifraga caryocatuctes of modern orni- 
thology.! The first known to have occurred in Britain was, according 
to Pennant, shot at Mostyn in Flintshire, 5th October 1753, while 
about fifteen more examples have since been procured, and others 
seen, in this island. For many years nothing was known of this 
bird during the breeding-season, when it seemed to disappear from 
sight, and this notwithstanding the interest taken in the search for 
its nest and eggs. It is now pretty clear that the discovery was 
due to the Abbé Caire of Saniéres in the Lower Alps, but though he 
obtained an egg in 1846, he was unable to produce proof of the fact, 
and the truth was not ascertained until some sixteen years later by 
the Danish oologists HH. Fischer and Erichsen, who after much 
labour found and took nests and eggs in the island of Bornholm.? 
The Nutcracker breeds very early in the year, long before the 
1 A monograph of the species by the Ritter Victor von Tschusi-Schmid- 
hoffen was printed at Dresden in 1874 with the title of Der Tannenheher, one of 
its many German names. 
2 Many other claimants appeared in the meanwhile without making good 
their pretensidns. The story of the discovery is told with some details in 
Yarrell’s British Birds (ed. 4, ii. pp. 332-337). The egg of the Nutcracker seems 
to have been first figured by Bideker (Journ. fiir Orn. 1856, pl. i. fig. 1), but the 
first specimen with an undeniable history, being from Bornholm as above stated, 
in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society (1867, pl. xv. fig. 2). 
