Exact Matchings. 141 



may lead them to choose such a course in dropping 

 eggs into nests, the true eggs of which are easily 

 discriminated from that of the cuckoo ; yet I am con- 

 vinced that in the vast majority of cases the cuckoos' 

 eggs are so well matched with those among which 

 they are intruded, that even by experts they are very 

 often not recognised, even though seen, and thus has 

 arisen the wholly misleading and erroneous idea to 

 which Mr. Romanes gives all the support he can that 

 the " deposition of a parasitic egg is comparatively an 

 exceedingly rare event." The unmatched eggs, 

 which, as I beHeve are, after all, a minority, are more 

 noticed than the matched eggs — a point which is 

 egregiously proved by this that up till a comparatively 

 recent date it was not believed in England that 

 cuckoos laid blue eggs, the Conihill writer quoted, 

 and Mr. Luke Ellis did not believe it, when they 

 wrote recently — a thing certainly not creditable to the 

 observing power and patience of British naturalists, 

 for here German observers had long anticipated them ! 

 Mr. Bidweli has in his collection, which he was so 

 very kind as to invite me to see, a cuckoo's egg in a 

 redstart's nest, which is so well matched, that even 

 the late Mr. John Hancock, when he first saw it, 

 would not accept it as a cuckoo's egg ! and it was only 

 after very careful, prolonged and minute examination, 

 and on certain very indistinct markings being pointed 

 out to him by Mr. Bidweli, that he would at length 

 admit it was. When specimens are found thus so 

 well matched, that even an expert and practical field 

 ornithologist like Mr. Hancock is in doubt about them, 

 and in nature would no doubt have passed them over, 

 what is extravagant in the position that large numbers 



