216 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
greyish green ground colour, sparingly marked with smaller 
reddish and larger reddish brown spots, and was remarkable as 
being thickly spotted at the smaller end instead of the larger. 
It was not quite so large as a Chaffinch’s egg. As I have already 
stated, the nest was on a patch of bare ground a foot or more in 
diameter, surrounded by grass and broom-bushes. 
After this examination I quickly withdrew to a rather more 
elevated position in the underwood of the beech-forest. From 
this spot, with my field-glasses, which I had luckily brought with 
me, I could survey the ground below me quite clearly. Within 
six minutes the Cuckoo came back, and after flitting around for 
some time alighted near the nesting-place, and proceeded with a 
characteristic waddle on to the nest. For more than an hour 
and a half I kept the spot in view. During all this time the 
Cuckoo sat quiet on the nest, so that there could be no further 
doubt in my mind that it was sitting on its own eggs. 
Until the 25th May I left the Cuckoo to sit undisturbed. 
On the morning of that day I visited the spot again, and, on the 
bird flying off, found, to my great joy, a young Cuckoo in the 
nest. Judging from my observations of young Cuckoos, it 
seemed to have been hatched about five or six days, for the 
shafts of the quills showed on the wings, traces of feathers were 
visible on the shoulders, and the eyes had begun to open. On 
one side of the nest I found the reddish brown and the small 
eggs. The first was crushed in and appeared to be rotten; the 
second was uninjured, but on attempting to blow it subsequently 
I found that it was unfertilized, and only contained a partly 
dried-up and wasted yolk. No doubt, like the injured one, it 
was an egg dropped during the time of sitting, and not fully 
developed nor fecundated, as was apparent from its inferior size, 
very thin shell, and small contents. 
In the meanwhile the sitting bird kept circling around me, 
flying low, at short intervals, a proof that she had great anxiety 
for her young one. My experiments with this young Cuckoo led 
me to quite a different result from that which I had previously 
formed from the behaviour of two others in the nest of a Red- 
breast. The latter were, always restless, continually extending 
their wings over the back, and one of them occasionally thrust 
his head and neck so far behind him that he fell over. The bird 
which I was now observing, on the other hand, kept quite quiet, 
