GREAT BLACK WOODPECKER IN ENGLAND. 343 
deceiver, but actually could not distinguish, by the mere sense 
of touch, the eggs of one of our Columbide from the eggs of one 
of our Picide. Can your readers swallow that, Sir? Then we 
have another correspondent, writing something about the inci- 
dence of solar rays upon the back of a Rook, making the latter 
look to him like a Wood Pigeon. Does he really believe that any 
naturalist has not observed that kind of phenomenon; the like 
of which, when the sun shines, you must have seen on almost 
any day on aslated roof? Can he, having gone to a museum, 
actually suppose that any sane man can have mistaken Picus 
martius flying at less than twenty yards distance toward the 
north-east of the observer, the sun being in the west, for any 
other bird? ‘There is a good deal else of what I will dignify 
with the name of dust, not equalling rubbish, which a camel’s- 
hair brush would sweep away in two or three strokes. I shall 
not use the brush, not simply because it would be a waste of my 
time, but because it would encroach upon your space. 
As regards the forty eggs of the Wryneck, obtained from the 
same nest-hole, the offspring of the same mother, taken I 
believe in about forty consecutive days (see Bull’s ‘ Birds of 
Herefordshire,’ p. 97), I should mention that many of them were 
shown to me by the late J. Skyrme in his then valuable collection. 
The latest laid of them were extraordinarily small. I regret that 
I have no notes of measurement. These eggs ought to be, and 
probably are, existent somewhere. He gave me the account 
of how they were obtained; but this had been previously com- 
municated to me by the experimenter, Dr. Powell, of Fawley 
Court, and the hole from which he had taken them was shown 
to me. I believe him to have been perfectly honest, and a 
careful observer. Anyhow the experiment was an old one, as I 
should have thought the critic ought to have known. Any of your 
readers, by making a series of such experiments, with patience, 
care as to hours, &c., will probably easily beat the record. I 
have seen something more surprising—a Song Thrush trying 
to sit on eighteen eggs. I know nothing about their parentage, 
but there was no mistaking the species of the parents. There 
was mud and clay all about the place, and there was no footprint 
of any human intriguer. Of the thirteen eggs which I removed, 
some were almost fresh ; others had undergone incubation, not, 
I think, of more than five days. 
