8516 The Zoologist— May, 1873. 



S. S. 1166, No. 4). Still the Professor evidently requires more 

 information about these blue eggs, and in a letter to the 'Field' 

 March 15, 1873), reprinted in the ' Zoologist' (S. S. 3473), declares 

 that " so far as he is aware, no one has ever found in the nest of a 

 hedgesparrow a cuckoo's egg which is similar to that of the hedge- 

 sparrow." Now 1 think myself extremely fortunate that I happen 

 to have just the evidence which is wanting on this point, and what 

 I cannot but consider unanswerable evidence ; for a short time 

 back a gentleman of unimpeachable veracity told me that he had 

 a very interesting fact about cuckoos' eggs to communicate to me, 

 which bore out the theory I had been putting forward, for that he 

 had himself discovered in the nest of a hedgesparrow two cuckoos' 

 eggs of a blue colour, and one of these was a very pronounced 

 blue ; and that he had watched this nest till the eggs were hatched, 

 when he himself saw two young cuckoos therein. This informa- 

 tion was so valuable, as my informant was a gentleman I could 

 trust, that I begged him to write down the facts of which he was 

 an eye-witness, and all ihe particulars he could recollect, which he 

 subsequently did, and now I proceed to quote the words of his 

 letter which I have before me. " Dear Sir, — I have found the 

 cuckoo's egg several times in the hedgesparrow'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 of almost as intense a blue as the 

 hedgesparrow'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 contained four hedgesparrow's eggs, besides the cuckoo's 

 two eggs above-mentioned. Of the hedgesparrow's eggs, one was 

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

 cuckoos died after two or three days' existence (1 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 wag- 

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

 yellowhammer and chafl5iiches' nests, and I have known it found 

 in the thrush's nest, and in all of these I have been remarkably 

 struck with the similarity of colour with the eggs of the different 

 birds in whose nests they were : indeed, for several years I had the 

 egg from the thrush's nest, which could scarcely be recognized from 



