224 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
locality of his observations, where he is a landowner) almost as 
well as he does the Canaries and Goldfinches of his aviary. He 
knows exactly whether his old friends have returned or not, and 
whether a new hen Cuckoo has taken the place of an old one that 
has died. He knows the old females which have returned, partly 
by their colouring, but more particularly by their eggs, which 
have always the same marking for the same female, but which 
vary much from those of other females—each female always 
returning to the same restricted locality. 
AsI did not find him at home when I called to talk over the 
matter with him, Herr Ochs wrote me a letter, which I copy 
exactly. It runs as follows:—‘In consequence of observations 
made for thirty years on the Cuckovos occurring here annually, 
I have come to the conclusion, after finding more than 100 eggs, 
mostly laid in the nest of the Robin, that (1) a Cuckoo returns 
every year to its chosen haunts; (2) that the eggs of a particular 
bird remain the same in form, colour, and size; so that the eggs 
of a new-comer to the locality may be distinguished from those 
of other Cuckoos by anyone who understands the subject.” 
[Herr Walter then refers to certain statements of his own 
made in 1876, at the first annual meeting of the ‘‘ Allgemein 
Deutsche Ornithologische Gesellschaft” (Bericht, Allg. Deutsch. 
Orn. Gesel. i. pp. 17, 84), and to other remarks of his printed 
in the ‘Monatschrift des Deutschen Vereins zum Schutze 
der Vogelwelt’ (1883, p. 36), to show that every female Cuckoo 
(1) always lays similar eggs, (2) always seeks the nest of the 
same species of foster-parent, and (8) always returns to the same 
locality ; and he adds that after six years further study he is 
still of the same opinion. ‘The lengthy paragraphs which follow 
are chiefly amplifications of former statements, and need not be 
here repeated. ] 
He thus concludes :—With regard to Herr Kiessel’s state- 
ment I consider it, for many reasons, best to be silent. A. Brehm 
has already said enough about it. Moreover, Kiessel appears to 
have been unacquainted with the young of the Cuckoo, for he says 
in a letter to Herr A. Miiller—“‘ The young Cuckoo, when only 
just hatched, had dark down (dunkelen Flaum) on several places, 
especially on the head and shoulders, like all young birds.” But 
the young Cuckoo when just emerged from the egg, as Herr 
Miller has correctly remarked, has no down, and is perfectly 
