Mr. Brine's Letter. 59 



the following letter from a friend — a gentleman whom 

 he could absolutely trust : 



Dear Sir, 



I have found the cuckoo's egg several times in the hedge- 

 sparrow's nest, and once two eggs, but varying from each other 

 both in colour and size. Having a doubt whether both belonged 

 to one cuckoo, or even one of them to a cuckoo at all, it being, 

 if almost, as intense a blue as the hedge-sparrow's, but very 

 little larger (the other being much lighter in colour and freckled 

 at its larger end), I determined to watch the nest, which con- 

 tained four hedge-sparrow's eggs besides the cuckoo's two eggs 

 above mentioned. Of the hedge-sparrow's eggs, one was some- 

 how lost ; the rest were all hatched, but one of the young cuckoos 

 died after two or three days' existence (I believe from being 

 too freely handled and exposed) : the other managed, in about a 

 week's time, to get rid of its companions, and when fledged was 

 himself made a prisoner, lived some months in a cage, and then 

 moped and died. I have also found the cuckoo's egg in the 

 wagtail's nest (though how it got there I could never tell), in the 

 yellow-hammer's and chaffinch's nests, and I have known it 

 found in the thrush's nest, and in all of these I have been re- 

 markably struck with the similarity of colour with the eggs of 

 the difterent birds in whose nests they were ; indeed for several 

 years I had the egg from the thrush's nest, which could scarcely 

 be recognised from the egg of the thrush in size, colour, or in 

 markings. I will add only one other fact : that I have found a 

 cuckoo's egg in a hedge-sparrow's nest two years in the same 

 hedge, which induces me to think it probable that both eggs 

 may have belonged to the same bird. As the facts above stated 

 are strictly within my own knowledge, you may make what use 

 of them you please. 



J. E. Brine. 

 Abbey House, Shaftesbury. 



And about the same time, Mr. Henry Hadfield, 

 Ventnor, Isle of Wight, in Zoologist, June, 1873, in 

 replying to some of Professor Newton's statements 



