280 Cuculidw. 



followed up and demonstrated by proofs of apparently the most 

 satisfactory character, on the part of himself and his friends, 

 that the eggs of the Cuckoo, which she lays one by one singly in 

 the nests of other birds, are somewhat similar in colour to the 

 eggs of those birds whose nests she selects* And thus it is by no 

 means an uncommon occurrence to see the egg of the Cuckoo 

 taken from a hedge-sparrow's nest, partaking of a greenish-blue 

 tinge ; another from the nest of a robin, of a reddish hue ; another 

 from a pipit's nest, of a brownish colour; and so on through 

 the twenty or thirty species in whose nests the egg of the 

 Cuckoo has been found. This was without doubt a very startling, 

 bold statement, and it evoked, as might be expected, no small 

 amount of opposition and ridicule when first it was propounded. 

 To my mind, however, it seemed a very beautiful idea, well 

 worthy of the most careful examination, so I spared no pains in 

 investigating it. And to this end I translated the lengthy article 

 of Dr. Baldamus,f and printed it in the Zoologist ; and I now 

 proceed to give a short re'sumd of that article. 



Dr. Baldamus begins his treatise by calling attention to the 

 great variety in colouring as well as in marking in a collection 

 of Cuckoos' eggs, and the astonishing resemblance these eggs 

 severally bear to the eggs of a variety of small birds usually 

 chosen as the foster-parents of Cuckoos : a fact which he says was 

 well known to the great ornithologists and oologists of Germany, 

 including Naurnann, Thienemann, Brehm, Gloger, von Homeyer 

 and others ; and I may add that this point was equally well known 

 to our British ornithologists as well.J But Dr. Baldamus seems to 

 have been the first to suspect that at the root of this striking 

 phenomenon there was a fixed law, perhaps a law which might be 

 discoverable; and his suspicions in this direction having been 

 aroused, he proceeded to pay diligent attention to the subject. 

 To this end he not only made most careful personal observations, 



Zoologist for 1853, p. 3988. 



t ' Neue Beitrage zur Fortpflanzungsgeschichte des Europaischen Kukkuks 

 (Cuculus canorus), von E. Baldamus/ Naumannia, 1853, pp. 307-326. 

 J "Wood's * Illustrated Natural History,' vol. ii., p. 572. 



