Pralle's Collection. 53 



out small round dark markings, like fly spots. ... I 

 have taken a young cuckoo out of a blue egg on 

 which they were so pale as almost to escape notice.'"'' 



Mr. Dresser gives the following very interesting 

 passage from Mr. Seebohm's notes on Mr. Pralle's 

 collection at Hildesheim : 



" In this collection are twelve blue cuckoo's eggs, 

 some uniform, unspotted, whereas others have faint 

 spots, like fly spots, here and there. The first of 

 these was in a nest of Saxicola stapaz'uia, and is blue, 

 with a few fly spots ; No. 2 ditto ; Nos. 3 and 4 are 

 unspotted blue, and are each with five eggs of Phyl- 

 loscopns sibllatrix ; No. 5 is with three eggs of 

 Ruticilla phcBnicurus, and No. 7 with three eggs of 

 the same species, this latter egg being blue, with a 

 few faint fly spots; Nos. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 are all blue, 

 with traces of spots, and are all with four or six eggs 

 of Ruticilla phcenicnrns except the last which was 

 found Avith only one egg of that species." f 



Mr. J. H. Gurney, in his admirable paper in the 

 Norfolk and Suffolk Natural History Society Journal, 

 well says : 



" Our cuckoo lays blue eggs oftener than is thought, 

 and Coccystes jacobinus, a cuckoo inhabiting Africa 

 and India, always lays them : to say blue cuckoo's 

 eggs have never been met with in England is quite 

 incorrect. ... In one nest we learn the blue egg 

 was a very little larger than a hedge-sparrow's, but it 

 produced a cuckoo, which only shows how easily they 

 may be passed over.'' [Italics are mine.] 



In the second volume of Dr. Bowdler Sharpe's 



* p. 384, vol. i. 



t Birds of Europe, ad loc. 



