A CUCKOO HATCHING ITS OWN EGGS. 215 
trouble by appending a translation of an article by Herr A. Walter, of 
Cassel (Journ. fiir Orn. 1889, pp. 33—40, in which the views of Herr 
Miller are seriously questioned and criticised.—Ep.] 
Herr Muller says :—On the morning of May 16th, 1888, when 
I was looking over a young plantation in my district of the Royal 
Forest of Hohenschied, a Cuckoo rose suddenly out of the 
bushes close to me, which, from its pale brownish colour, I 
recognised as a female bird. I soon discovered, in a slight 
depression of the ground near the spot whence the bird flew up, 
three eggs, which attracted my attention from not being all of 
the same coloration, and from one of the three being of 
considerably smaller size than the other two. As I could not 
recognize the eggs as belonging to any of our smaller birds that 
breed on the ground, and as the Cuckoo kept flying about me in 
a curious way, I resolved to conceal myself under a neighbouring 
hedge in order to watch the bird more closely. After I had been 
there a few minutes I saw the Cuckoo alight on the ground and 
crawl towards the place where the eggs were. My idea now was 
that the Cuckoo was intending to add her egg to the three 
already there, and I accordingly remained in my hiding-place at 
least three-quarters of an hour, without seeing the Cuckoo take 
its departure. This long delay, and the cireumstance that no 
other nesting-bird made its appearance in the neighbourhood, 
led me to suspeot that this must be an exceptional case, and 
made me very eager to investigate it. I therefore cautiously 
approached the spot, and soon saw the Cuckoo again rise from 
the ground. On this occasion, after wheeling round in a half- 
circle, it retreated further off into the forest. A closer 
examination of the eggs convinced me that two of them 
presented no remarkable differences in size or structure, although 
the ground colour was certainly not the same. I recognized 
them as Cuckoos’ eggs of very fine grain and thin shell. One of 
them was of the characteristic yellowish white or pale waxy 
ground colour, with dark brown points and a few streaks and 
scratches. The second, of the same size, was of a reddish yellow 
or clay-colour, thickly covered with oil-coloured markings, so 
that it was something like an egg of the Redbreast. They were 
at least as large as Yellowhammers’ eggs, but more elongated. 
The most curious egg was the third, which was quite different 
from the two others. It was very like a Chaffinch’s egg, of a 
