3478 The Zoologist — April, 1873. 



cuckoo brought up from the nest in this country which has come 



under my personal notice. 



Alfred Charles Smith. 



Yatesbury Kectory, Calne, 

 March 3, 1873 



Postscript. — Since writing the above, I have received a letter 

 from my friend Professor Newton, in which he demurs to ray 

 somewhat sweeping accusation of apathy on the part of British 

 ornithologists in regard to the subject of Dr. Baldaraus' theory, and 

 points out how he himself had handled this question in an article 

 which he had sent to ' Nature,' (No. iii. Nov. 18, 1869), and how 

 that article had been followed by sundry communications on the 

 subject in subsequent numbers of the same periodical. It there- 

 fore becomes me to apologise to ray friend for such apparent, 

 though most unintentional, disregard of his article on the question. 

 Most assuredly I should be one of the last voluntarily to overlook 

 the published opinion of one I esteem so highly as Professor 

 Newton, and the more so when that opinion was given on a 

 question in which I am deeply interested ; but in real truth it 

 was not until my paper on the cuckoo in this month's' Zoologist ' 

 was in type, that I was aware that he had written on the subject; 

 for it is one of the drawbacks which naturalists who live in rural 

 districts must suffer, that it is impossible for them to get sight of 

 all the many Natural History publications which seem to multiply in 

 number with every month ; nor had any of my ornithological friends 

 chanced to call my attention to the paper in question. 1 have now 

 obtained a copy of that paper, and have read it with great pleasure, 

 and am delighted to find that the Professor agrees so entirely with 

 Dr. Baldamus, whose rules he corapletely endorses. Let m not, 

 however, be deemed perverse and obstinate, if I still maintain that 

 no British ornithologist, ^so far as I can ascertain, has yet investi- 

 gated this question in the systematic way, and after the excellent 

 example of painstaking and diligence set us by Dr. Baldamus and 

 Dr. Rey, neither of whom entered upon the subject until he had 

 carefully studied every particular in colour, markings and size, 

 not only of a large series of nearly one hundred cuckoos' eggs, 

 (Zool. S. S. 1150), but also (what was little less important) of the 

 eggs of the foster-parent with which they were severally found. 

 That British ornithologists sliould be able to examine so large a 



