The Zoologist — April, 1873. 3479 



number of cuckoos' eggs in this country, T do not think possible, 

 because I imagine the cuckoo does not abound in our more thiclily 

 populated land, as it does in some parts of Germany : still, if every 

 enquirer, who may chance to meet with one single cuckoo's egg 

 in the coming season, would make a point of very accurately de- 

 scribing its size, colour, and markings, and those of the other eggs 

 found with it, (assisting his description with a water-coloured 

 drawing, if practicable) we might by degrees, and by the ex- 

 perience of many, gain a mass of information which would be of 

 the greatest value as well as interest ; and this I again heartily 

 commend to the attention of all out-door observers. Let me, how- 

 ever, once more remind my readers that there are avowedly and of 

 necessit}', many exceptions to the rule (if rule there be) of the 

 similarity of colour between the egg of the cuckoo and those of 

 the nurse to which it is entrusted, as was pointed out by Dr. Bal- 

 damus, who indeed took pains to repeat and dwell upon this 

 caution. 



March 6, 1873, 



A. C. S. 



^ntlm at ftlu §M{i5. 



Autumns on the Spey. By A. E. Knox, M.A., F.L.S., &c. 172 pp. 

 post 8vo ; four litho. plates by Wolf. London : Van Voorst, 

 Paternoster Row. 1872. 



Mr., or as he is usually called " Captain," Knox, is always an 

 agreeable, and often an instructive companion, but as he advances 

 in age he loses, as we all do, the vigour and freshness of youth, 

 and trusts rather too much to his book-learning for what is 

 irreverently called " padding." One would have fancied that his 

 theme, the breezy hill-side and the " foaming river," would have 

 sufBced him for materials without unapt quotations from Herodotus, 

 Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Gordon Gumming, Bishop Stanley or Hugh 

 Miller, and that the spirit of the motto he has taken for his first 

 chapter would have led him to trust for inspiration exclusively to 

 Nature in her unadorned beauty, as revealed in the river and the 

 hill-side : here is the motto, and nothing could be more appropriate 

 or harmonize better with the author's subject : — 



